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INSIDE THE BRITISH 
ISLES 



INSIDE THE BRITISH 
ISLES 



BY 
ARTHUR GLEASON 

Author oj "Golden Lads," etc. 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1917 



.A^|1, 



Copyright, 1917, by 
The Century Co. 



Published, May, 1917 



/ 

lY 31 1917 

>C1,A462766 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Democracy on the March 3 

II Labor 14* 

The Social Revolution in England . . l-l 

The Discovery 41 

Democratic Control 53 

The Pioneers 58 

Reasonable Satisfaction 89 

III Women 95 

Emancipation 95 

The Feminists of the War Office and Ad- 
miralty 118 

Bowing Them Out 1^7 

Disorganization 144 

England's Policewomen 154 

IV Ireland 173 

The Irish Question 173 

Young England Speaks . . . • . .186 

The Siamese Twin 192 

Poverty: The Real Irish Question . . 206 

V Social Studies 228 

What of England? . . . . . .228 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTEE PAGE 

Why They Will Win . . . . . .231 

Dragons' Teeth 242 

Change 250 

A Batch of Papers ...... 260 

Free Speech . 274 

The Right of Asylum 281 

Public Opinion 295 

Where the Lane Turns 307 

The New Way 315 

The New Americanism 320 

Nationahty 330 

VI LliOYD-GEORGE 341 

VII Vale 350 

Appendix 357 

Index 423 



INSIDE 
THE BRITISH ISLES 



INSIDE 
THE BRITISH ISLES 

CHAPTER I 

DEMOCRACY ON THE MARCH 

England has acted on the world as a principle 
of release for freedom, sometimes by irritating it 
into activity, as with the American colonies, 
sometimes by cooperating with it, as in Canada 
and Australia. The balance of power has de- 
parted from England to a wider area. But the 
principle of government which creates and directs 
that power continues to be an English principle. 
It is the principle of democratic control. One 
hundred years ago England was in a war in which 
her three leaders were Pitt, Wellington, and Nel- 
son, three Englishmen. To-day Great Britain is 
in a war in which her three leaders are Lloyd- 
George, Haig, and Beatty, a Welshman, a 
Scotchman, and an Irishman. That is of course 
3 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

only a chance illustration, but it serves to show 
the fact that the field of opportunity has broad- 
ened, and that England is no longer the over- 
shadowing power in a union, but is the equal 
among equals. 

If that extension of power among her mem- 
bers is true of England on her island, it is also 
true of her among her colonies. Already the new 
cabinet has called the dominions to a special war 
conference. This is the first step in a momentous 
change in the constitution of the empire. The 
peoples of the dominions are not contented with 
their status, and they refuse to go on indefinitely 
under the present arrangement, which focuses all 
imperial responsibility in the hands of statesmen 
of the British Isles. They determined to have a 
voice in foreign policy, and in the creation of an 
interlocking imperial domestic policy, which will 
organize the resources of Canada, Australia, 
New Zealand, South Africa, and India. The 
constitutional reconstruction calls for an imperial 
cabinet, answerable in authority to an imperial 
parliament of all the democracies of the empire. 

The result of this will be the most populous, 
largest, most powerful state in the world, and that 
4 



DEMOCRACY ON THE MARCH 

state will not be an autocracy. It will be a com- 
monwealth, an agreement of equals. It will act 
from one will, with one purpose. The operations 
of that will inside so vast an organism will seem 
almost like a process of nature. Its influence 
will be decisive on the immediate future of the 
human race. Under the perfected internal or- 
ganization, which is the very purpose of the union, 
the food-supply of a quarter of mankind will be 
guaranteed. The land question will be solved. 
The balance of agricultm'e to industry will be 
determined and established. The problems of 
labor will be dealt with in a freedom of opportu- 
nity and an increase of productive power which 
would have seemed Utopian to an earlier genera- 
tion. That imperial parliament will be a league 
of peace which will give the fh'st stable basis for a 
world peace. 

This will be the greatest extension of demo- 
cratic control ever appUed to the map of the 
world. The dimensions of it are so large that the 
imagination even of its projectors has not wak- 
ened to what it implies. A great organism of 
democracies, excepting only India, will exist in 
a world still half in political bondage. It will 
5 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

carry its community far along in the twofold pur- 
pose of all government — the control of environ- 
ment and the betterment of human relationships. 
Suppose the bundle of states in Europe were sud- 
denly to be thrown together in a vast repubhcan 
state of common purpose, determined on a uni- 
fied domestic and foreign policy, then we should 
have no more amazing entity than in this plan of 
the new British commonwealth. Impossible, of 
course, for Europe, because there is no central 
principle, overriding differences of tradition, 
race, and language ; but possible and about to be 
consummated in the empire, because the central 
principle of democratic control is accepted, and 
because the kinship of blood and language exists. 
And it is all so obvious. The synthesis, once 
stated, demands its own realization. It is like 
the enlightenment which the faithful believe we 
shall receive after death, when we shall say, 
"Why, of course." 

Such is the dream which British statesmen will 
proceed to put into execution at the close of the 
war. It is the war whose pressure has coalesced 
these five democracies, each busy with its own self- 
contained and isolated life. A common danger 
6 



DEMOCRACY ON THE MARCH 

and a common experience of suffering forced the 
realization of ^vhat a thoroughgoing partnership 
would bring in organization for industry and in 
the attainment of a good life. The war created a 
highly desirable friction between Great Britain 
and her colonial democracies, which revealed the 
present unsatisfactory status and the need of a 
new order. Out of that friction has come the 
vision of the new commonwealth. 

In the light of this far-flung scheme, the cab- 
inet changes at Westminster seem petty. But 
they are actually in part a response to it. In 
England's reach toward this new synthesis she has 
instinctively turned to the men who have shown, 
either recently or in long years of service, an mi- 
derstanding that England is not the British Em- 
pire, but that the British Empire is in process of 
becoming itself a single state, the greatest in the 
world. The changes in the ministry are not alone 
expressions of the desire to win the war, but they 
indicate a di'ift of thought, only half-conscious 
as yet, toward the future commonw^ealth, toward 
the unification of the little unrelated democracies 
which England has sown around the world. 

The British democracy believes it has found its 
7 



EN'SLDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

groogp id kados ifx tbe ^esent cdsis in the neir 
rahagt lis w3k is to wm tiie to, and it begns, 
ttnq^ dEnilr, to soise tiie Deed (rf impeiial reoon- 
stradifB. When tlie need swings ba^ aculdy 
to Ike mtexnal pviUenis €)f ]ab«- ad juslnKnt, this 
calanet ^v^ be 5«ifthr displaced if it faik to fbne- 
n.c in r ifmand, cr ceitam of its men^beis 
%^_1 f new iD^exial nmustry and 

r ij _ "^-2 poUic has to think in 

ijir-— .-T ;_:i:r >t nnrdated pnnioees. 

It zn Li iTrr J UIL2 .r ". . - . :. IS sHDuttaneoosIr, so 

: r^sscstiBT illrr 

It t^ t: -iizi 



i-g of '"politics" 



Canon.; doi, wiien 
at gnps wiih a cnsir 
and f <ara^n ^oEey. 
JuTJiwl that tiaiffihDc 



DEMOCRACY OX THE AIARCH 

swer the innneiiiate neei The ckiin c: c-rrtain 
observers timt the present gr^-'Up of imper:^ ex- 
ecatives, agncoltaral and educatioDal experts, 
and business captains, are a reactknary force, 
revealing the breakdown of democracy in time of 
strain- is a failure to see ooe of tbe central prin- 
ciples of democratic govermnoit. Democratic 
goremment is a government by expots, inter- 
preting tbe collective will of tiie people. We 
shall probably see a s-eries of calMnet sfaifts in tbe 
next five years, as each of tbe tbree great prob- 
lems of British policy is taken up. Tbe lime- 
light win flit from Alancbester and Sootb Waks 
to Ireland, and thai to Australia, and then to 
Russia, and public opinioQ wiQ demand a Teiy 
distinct set of faculties, and therefore of leaders, 
in dealing with each of these various qoestioDS. 

Since the war began many persons have a^ed. 
Can a democracy produce leaders of the same 
merit as an autocracy? And tbe answer bas 
often been Xo. But the question fails to state 
the problem. War leaders are ooe requirement, 
imperial leaders are another, and tbe creators of 
domestic policy are a third. Let us state tbe need 
in these terms: 

9 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

1. Can a democracy produce leaders in peace 
times who can shape legislation and give guidance 
to the democratic movement? The mass of the 
people have developed a collective will, which de- 
mands a reconstruction of the state, expressed in 
terms of parliamentary control (manhood suf- 
frage, the predominance of the House of Com- 
mons over the House of Lords) ; and a recon- 
struction of industry and the institution of prop- 
erty, expressed in terms of social legislation, af- 
fecting land reform, minimum wage, and control 
of collective enterprise, such as mines and rail- 
ways, and further expressed in free experiment 
outside legal enactment, though later to be in- 
corporated in legislative acts, such as workshop 
councils. Those leaders of peace Great Britain 
produced. Her swift adjustments to the de- 
mands of modern self-conscious democracy have 
proved that she is the fertile mother of democratic 
initiative. 

2. Can a democracy produce leaders under the 
strain of international crisis who can carry 
through a determined policy demanding organi- 
zation, efficiency, applied science, and a spiritual 
unity? This requirement is distinct from the re- 

10 



DEMOCRACY ON THE MARCH 

quirements of a wise domestic policy. The rea- 
son is plain. The dealings of a nation with its 
citizens have reached a level of sanity, intelligence, 
and ethical decency which the dealings of nation 
with nation have not reached. Internationally, 
we are ki the jungle. To handle these interna- 
tional relationships of greed and hate, the nation 
has to employ brute force. It has to turn its 
farmers into killers. It has to make shells in 
place of workers' cottages. But even while this 
need is most acute, and because it is acute, there 
arose in Great Britain the demand for a policy 
which would draw the sprawled-out empire into 
one state. The present cabinet is the answer to 
that demand. 

To the question, Can a democracy produce 
leaders? the British people reply that they are 
selecting their leaders according to their need, and 
that, in doing so, they are proving a democratic 
principle. It is not an abrogation of the demo- 
cratic principle when a people turns to its ex- 
perts. It is one expression of the democratic 
principle. For democracy brought in two things 
when it entered life with the organization of the 
industrial revolution. It brought in a mass 
11 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

movement and it brought in specialization. The 
collective will must alwaj^s turn to experts to or- 
ganize its desires into action. It will control 
those experts, but it will never supersede them. 
It exercises its control in the choice of them, not 
in itself attempting tasks of which it is ignorant. 
A democracy in itself can liberate only an im- 
pulse. It cannot frame emergency measures by 
initiative and referendum. It will always be 
called on from time to time to pass over its power 
to a handful of specialists and trust them to use 
its mass momentum in the right direction toward 
the desired end. 

The democratic movement began consciously 
with the purpose of freeing the human race from 
poverty. But it has steadily undergone a broad- 
ening of purpose under the pressure of its own 
requirements. It has found that for self-preser- 
vation it must include the release of talent and the 
creation of spiritual values in its program. To 
produce leaders and to enhance the meaning of 
life are as much within its province as a proper 
standard of living in terms of hours and wages. 
It recognizes its need of an aristocracy of talent. 
The leaders of the democratic movement state 
12 



DEMOCRACY ON THE MARCH 

this: such men as A. E., Wells, Zimmern, and 
Sidney Webb. This aristocracy will include so- 
cial experts, artists, ethical leaders, teachers, im- 
perial executives, organizers, and specialists in 
foreign policy. War is only one of the many 
situations where the democracy, with its dis- 
tributed responsibilit}% does not possess in itself 
the necessary intelligence and unity of policy to 
master the sudden crisis. The democracy is only 
fulfilling its own nature in recognizing a diversity 
of gifts. 

But through all the adjustments of the coming 
years, calling for expert treatment, the principle 
of democratic control will prevail. In time the 
democracy will develop its own tradition of pol- 
icy and service and generate its own leaders. 
The common people of Great Britain have never 
spoken. It was therefore believed they were 
dumb. But they were not dumb ; they were only 
inarticulate. The common people of Great Brit- 
ain have never acted with common purpose to one 
end. It was therefore believed that they were 
impotent. But they were not impotent; they 
were only unawakened. Now they are learning 
to speak and to act. 

13 



CHAPTER II 

LABOR 

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND 

The opinion has been wide-spread among so- 
cial workers in America that the war has crushed 
liberahsm in England. They have formed this 
opinion because social work has been postponed, 
trade-union rules have been abrogated, dissenters 
like Bertrand A. W. Russell silenced, Russian 
revolutionary centers in London suppressed. 
But it is a characteristic of experts working in 
details to miss the main currents of tendency. 
No friend of radical democracy need be worried 
by the results of the last two years. The blood 
spilled by the working-classes at the front has 
been justified by the profound modifications 
wrought in English consciousness. A nation 
mobilized and under arms is a rich field for radi- 
cal ideas. Blood fertilizes the soil for change. 
Those of the school of Curzon and Gwjmne, who 
14 



LABOR 

believed that the good old days of special privilege 
would be restored by conscription, are doomed to 
an awakening more thorough than befell the 
French reactionaries of 1790. For this is not an 
affair of a few noble heads. It is the remaking of 
a nation. 

England is taking strides toward cooperative 
socialism. For the first time in their history, the 
English are thinking in terms of a state — "a 
modern state, in all its complexity, with scientific 
laws and regulations." This is a view "utterly 
strange to English thought, steeped as it always 
had been in empiricism, and only inclined to such 
piecemeal legislation as a particular grievance 
or a particular occasion might demand." I am 
quoting a government investigator. These tend- 
encies were already in operation before the war; 
but what might have required twenty-five years 
to bring to a head, the war has accelerated, inten- 
sified, and even altered. 

It is a misreading of English character to think 
that anything remotely resembling the state so- 
cialism of Germany, the card-indexing of the 
community for vocational training, the regiment- 
ing of the intellectual life into a body of state- 
15 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

controlled professors, will result from the present 
English revolution. The social change in Eng- 
land is not coming with any such over-emphasized 
nationalism. The Enghshman wants to be let 
alone for all his personal choices. He wants to 
disagree with official statements. He will not be 
coerced even for "his good," as that good is seen 
by another. Xor will the change come as an in- 
determinate, spreading internationalism, such as 
has infected radical thought for half a century. 
It will be English, inside an Enghsh environ- 
ment. 

There are two truths so plain that we wonder 
it required a hundred years to find them out. It 
is the war that has finally revealed them to our 
blind eyes. The first truth is that high wages 
give high productiveness. A well-fed, self-re- 
specting, healthy workman can do more work 
than an mider-nourished, servile workman. If 
the employer wants a good product and plenty of 
it, he must pay a living wage. The second truth 
is that workmen must work efficiently if they 
wish high wages. If they cut down productive- 
ness there is no money to pay them. The war has 
smoked the workers out. Their sacred secret 
16 



LABOR 

processes which required hours to work have 
turned out as simple as building-blocks. It is 
public knowledge now, the time it takes to do a 
piece of factory work. For years the worker has 
been limiting his output. A manufacturer of 
marine engines states that where thirteen rivets 
were turned out before the war, seventy are now' 
being made by the same number of workers. 
The worker is making the same fight here that he 
made when he broke the first machines. The ma- 
chines were robbing him of his living, he thought. 
Instead of that, they have given more men a bet- 
ter living. Of late years the worker has been 
fighting his own productivity. How is shrinking 
wealth to give him an expanding wage ? Where 
is the money to come from? As a method in a 
given emergency, sabotage and limitation of out- 
put are effective ; but as a nation-wide policy they 
are instruments that cut the hands of the user. 
The trade-unions surrender their hard-won regu- 
lations, and suddenly production leaps up as if 
it had been released from a dead-weight. They 
are still insisting on government guarantees that 
the old restrictions will be handed back to them 
after the war. It would be flattering to write 
17 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

that it is by labor that the constructive thinking 
is being done, but it would be untrue. There is 
absence of patient thought, lack of a constructive 
program, the muddle of a helpless creature caught 
unawares in a tidal wave. 

It was the making of shells that taught Eng- 
land the new synthesis of capital and labor. Sud- 
denlj^ she was forced to turn out huge quantities 
of a product in order to save the lives of her peo- 
ple. Under that tragic pressure she had to learn 
overnight how to get a large product. She be- 
gan in the manner dear to ruling classes: she 
started an old-time "personal-morality" cam- 
paign of the evangelistic sort, and her most gifted 
exhorter, Lloyd-George, went out to down drink. 
She then preached thrift to the factory-worker. 
But she soon dropped that way of getting at it ; 
she stopped lecturing the laboring-man for his bad 
habits. 

And swiftly she found the solution. It is this : 
State ownership of some factories ; state control 
of many factories ; state oversight of an ever-in- 
creasing number of factories; a conscription of 
abnormal profits for the community; a living 
wage; decent working conditions; limited hours 
18 



LABOR 

of labor; no restriction of output; no sabotage; 
no discrimination by workers against workers, 
but all to be employed, union and non-union, 
male and female ; efficiency ; the use of machinery 
up to its capacity instead of dribbling a process 
through a day where a half -day of proper han- 
dling would have completed the product. 

There are broken planks all along the length 
of this platform. But every sag has meant de- 
creased output, a longer war, more young men 
killed in battle. And once England had settled 
the main question with a measure of honesty, she 
found that some other things were added unto 
her. When she paid a living wage to people who 
had never had it before, and put before them a 
national ideal instead of a benefit for another 
class, she found that two million persons joined 
her national savings fund, thereby breaking an 
immemorial British habit. She found that her 
prisons had fewer inmates, that the personal 
morahty of her inhabitants was in the main im- 
proved. She found that her school children in 
factory commmiities were better nourished than 
they had been in the memory of the examining 
physicians. She found that her woman question 
19 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

solved itself. The veiy suffragette leaders, such 
as Mrs. Drummond and Mrs. Pankhurst, who 
had put gray hairs on Lloyd-George's head and 
lines of worry into his face, recruited soldiers, ex- 
plained the national need to the nien miners of the 
north counties, assisted in organizing masses of 
"unemployable" women into industrial workers, 
and were welcomed by Lloyd-George and the 
Government as efficient helpers in unifying the 
nation. And, far more important than the co- 
operation of a handful of leaders, the unrest and 
discontent of large numbers of women became 
transformed into energy. 

While it is ti-ue that only half a million women 
have entered industry, that figure is only a frac- 
tion of the number of women who have trans- 
ferred their activity from domestic service and the 
parasitic trades into the main channels of in- 
dustry. In munitions alone five himdred thou- 
sand women have stepped over from unregulated 
hours and low wages to sharply defined hours and 
comparatively high wages. These women, and 
several hundred thousand others in factory pro- 
cesses, in railway, tram-car, and omnibus work, 
and in business superintendence, have "tasted 
20 



LABOR 

blood." By that I mean they have won an in- 
creased freedom and independence, however im- 
perfect even yet, and a higher wage. To send 
them " home" will prove a task larger than the 
paper resolutions of any men's trade-union, that 
women workers must give up their jobs. 

It is one more of time's ironic revenges that it 
is the entrance of women upon the scene which has 
precipitated social questions to solution, where be- 
fore they were seething in separate, repellent ele- 
ments. Woman's long campaign for the vote 
supplied the needed intellectual criticism of plural 
voting and of suffrage restricted to a prop- 
erty qualification. "Manhood" suffrage will be 
granted. It is not possible for a nation to deny 
a vote to men who have been ready to die for that 
nation. This manhood suffrage will include 
votes for women, for the women have mobilized 
with an equal loyalty. 

Woman's irritating presence in industry has 
emphasized the demand for proper working con- 
ditions. It has sharpened the wage controversy, 
and it has revealed the need of far-reaching meas- 
ures to deal with the unemployment situation that 
the nation will face on the day of peace. Women 
21 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

are not going to enter industry. They have al- 
ready entered it, and half a million fresh workers 
have been added. It is clear that increasing the 
number of workers does not lessen the problem 
of a living wage. There is only one answer to 
the violently acute situation which has been 
forced by these women, and which will come to 
a crisis when five million men hang their khaki in 
the closet. The areas of production must be 
widened not tenderly and with the imperceptible 
gradualness of a natural process, but swiftly. 

(1) The land must be broken up into small 
holdings. Cooperation in produce and market- 
ing must be practised among the peasant tenants. 
Ireland has blazed the way here. 

(2) The state must institute fields of activity 
at home, helping to establish new industries, such 
as dye-works. It must make use of an immense 
amount of new automatic machinery, installed to 
make shells, and adapted to an expansion of gen- 
eral engineering work and to the creation of new 
industries. The head of a motor-car company 
told me that two thirds of his present machinery 
has been created since the war. The report of 
the British Association states, "For the first time 

22 



LABOR 

in the history of the west of Scotland engineering 
shops had been filled with modern machine tools." 
This enormous investment cannot be scrapped. 

(3) The state must greatly extend its sphere 
of activities throughout the empire in cattle-rais- 
ing, in developing raw lands, in producing com- 
modities from the land. 

These methods will be used to meet the unem- 
ployment situation bj^ furnishing new jobs, and to 
meet the burden of increased taxation by giving 
an increased income. The larger progi'am will of 
course be postponed till its advocates are more 
numerous and better organized. Such a pro- 
gram will include : 

(1) An extension of transportation facilities, 
a greatly enlarged use of waterways, the building 
of new and better roads. 

(2) Improved housing. The foul slums of 
great cities and towns, the vile homes of agri- 
cultural laborers, will have to be razed by as dras- 
tic a plan as that by which Haussmann drew his 
blue pencil down through the jungle of Paris. 
New dwellings in the place of the "lung blocks" 
must be built. 

(3) Afforestation. If it proves true that 

2S 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

there are several million acres in the British Isles 
that are unfit for intensive agriculture, this area 
affords an opportunity for forest development, 
which in eighty years would offer rich returns to 
the state. 

Under such an extension of enterprise there 
would be plenty of work after the war, and there- 
fore plenty of jobs. The problem is how to ob- 
tain the money with which to finance the work. 
The war has shown how to get the money. The 
conscription of profits, death duties, and the taxa- 
tion of incomes have availed, with new areas of 
production, to give a more wide-spread, better- 
distributed prosperity to England than she en- 
joyed before the war. It is the line of solution 
that will be enforced after the war. The exact 
pressure that will enforce it is the demand for a 
continuation of the present high wages. 

This program is being postponed as long as 
possible. Its items will be applied unevenly, and 
parts will go neglected. Committees of Parlia- 
ment are sure to bring in ingenious little outlines 
for legislation, which will affect a few thousand 
workers, while the anny will demobilize at the 
rate of five thousand a day. But for every fail- 
M 



LABOR 

ure in boldness and energy, for every lag in ex- 
ecution, the nation will pay in decreased exports, 
falling wages, the pressure of taxation, and a 
wrangle between masters and men. The new 
order of life is still badly delayed at many points. 
The lot of the agricultural laborer is miserable. 
The "East Ends" of the industrial cities remain 
sodden. An immense number of workers are be- 
ing underpaid, for the rise in wages has reached 
only a fraction. A ministry of commerce and a 
ministry of labor are needed at once, and in the 
ministry of labor there should be a department 
for women's work, conducted by women under- 
secretaries. 

Wages and hours remain the heart of the social 
movement. The emphasis will not shift from 
wages and hours. But a new demand has been 
added to these "old timers." It is the demand by 
labor for a voice in the control of its working 
conditions. Mr. Lloyd-George responded to this 
demand by greatly increasing the scope of wel- 
fare work in factories. Through the famous 
manufacturer and social worker, Seebohm 
Rowntree, he has put protective agencies at work 
in munition factories which affect the lives of half 
25 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

a million persons who were not safeguarded to 
the same extent formerly. This safeguarding is 
done by welfare secretaries, whose duty it is to 
study the health, home conditions, and sanitary 
appliances of women. Grievances of workers 
are laid before these secretaries. Welfare secre- 
taries are not a new arrival in British industry, 
but there were few of them in relation to the im- 
mense numbers of factories and workers. This 
movement toward conducting industry in its so- 
cial relationship from the point of view of the 
worker is in its beginning. Labor will press on 
for an increasing recognition of its right to be 
heard in management in workshop adjustments, 
the speed of machinery, rest-times, hours of work, 
details of discipline, and the grading of labor. 

As this tide of reform rises higher, there is a 
back wash. Class education, land monopoly, a 
state church, persist down to our own day. Eng- 
land has continued in a modified, far less harsh 
form those special privileges of a ruling class that 
in France led to the overthrow of the nobility and 
the clergy. The industrial revolution of a cen- 
tury ago suddenly altered the texture of feudal 
English life, just as it would have altered France 



LABOR 

without the French Revolution. It added a new 
upper layer to the pressure from overhead on the 
manual worker in agriculture and industry, at the 
same time that it gave an ever-increasing popula- 
tion a share in the means of production. But the 
coming of machinery, creating a new world, was 
powerless in England to disturb the big land 
holdings, the church, and restricted education. 
They have continued to govern the conditions of 
life. The best defense of the class system which 
I have recently seen is that given in lectures to 
the University of Pennsylvania by Geoffrey But- 
ler under the title of "The Tory Tradition." 
He clearly shows the contribution which has been 
made by the Tory rejection of a utilitarian stand- 
ard, their distrust of sectional control, their in- 
sistence on the organic conception of the state, 
their behef in the power of tradition and the an- 
cient processes of government, their emphasis on 
national duties, and therefore on a far-sighted 
foreign policy. He says, "Our system of classes 
represents the effect of selection by the capacity 
to govern." And again, "Heredity is no Tory 
invention, but a scientific fact." 

In any analysis of unseemly class prepon- 
27 



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derance the honest student of Engh'sh conditions 
has to qualif}^ the downright statement. Thus 
the landed gentry have often exercised a personal 
care for their tenants and the village community 
that the modern liberal captain of industry has 
sometimes neglected to exercise toward his em- 
ployees. But the land monopoly has prevented 
England from being self-supporting and from 
relieving the pressure on industry of an over- 
crowded labor supply. It has robbed her of a 
sturdy land-owning peasantry like the French, 
and has given her in their place a city-bred, under- 
sized, intellectually feeble, morally infirm lower 
class. 

The intellectuals of the public schools and of 
Oxford and Cambridge have supphed a poise 
and dignity to modern life that a mediocre democ- 
racy^ lacks. Their graduates have given honest 
leadership in the Government. Recently their 
young men have gone gallantly to a service from 
which there is no returning. But much of the 
defense for the rigid, medieval class system, in so 
far as it possesses an intellectual basis, has been 
supplied by public school and university men. 
They are living in the home of lost causes. 
28 



LABOR 

The belated Tory Church of England clergy 
have continued to be an ameliorating influence in 
their communities. Their sane manner of living, 
their personal kindliness, their patient absorption 
in the humble lives about them — all these make a 
contribution we overlook in our easy generaliza- 
tions on the decayed church. And there are 
abounding elements inside the established church 
itself that are as liberal as any elements in modern 
life. That church still has wise leaders, like Dean 
Welldon of Manchester and a dozen others. The 
sacramental view of life has profound and per- 
manent values for certain persons. But when 
all has been said, it remains true that the church, 
with its compromised theology, its indifference 
to social injustice, its ignorance of where the 
modern fight for righteousness is being waged, 
its land-holding, its taxation, its absence of intel- 
lectual force in seeking truth, has acted as a deter- 
rent in the emancipation of the masses. A state 
rehgion has been a soporific, drugging the laborer 
to believe that his lot in life was a paii; of the 
scheme of things. As an institution the church, 
and as a body the clergy, have not sought equality 
for their communities. The present National 
29 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

Mission of Repentance and Hope, the most 
ambitious crusade the church has launched in 
many years, has been swung over into an evan- 
gehstic campaign against the personal vices of 
drink and sexual indulgence, and into an old- 
fashioned appeal for personal righteousness and 
the deepening of the religious life. The ma j ority 
of the bishops remain blind to the demand of the 
workers for an economic underpinning to their 
lives. The workers believe that the way to a 
proper life is by taking a hand in the control of 
industry, by a living wage, and by fewer hours of 
work. They are frankly uninterested in the 
restriction of public houses and a more diligent 
attendance in places of worship till they see that 
their larder and their leisure are guaranteed. 

These, then, are the forces of reaction tighten- 
ing themselves for the struggle. These great 
estates of the landed gentry, the clerg}% and the 
public school and university men will die hard in 
defense of the class system. They will be power- 
fully supported by the individualistic capitalist, 
avid for his profits, and by the timid, unintelligent 
middle class, fearful of its narrow income from 
rents, stock-holding, and small investment. 
30 



LABOR 

But the same quick action that turned out shells 
by the acre will be enforced by the return of a 
nation in arms. It is not that they will use the 
rifle to shoot. It is that their strength has been 
compacted where their eye can see it, their oigani- 
zation ready-made for them, their sei-vice to the 
nation acknowledged. Soldiers and workers are 
the same men, inside the small area of an island. 
At one stroke war won those things for which in 
peace a portion of the English people seek in 
vain: proper food, correct conditions for effi- 
ciency, a pension for dependents, high honor for 
service, a common sacrifice, and, embracing all 
like a chmate, a favoring public opinion, a great 
universal equality. They will demand that the 
same himianity be let loose into their daily life 
of the factories. Is the basic work of peace less 
worthy than trench routine? 

There has been a certain vital force in new 
countries that England has lacked in recent years, 
Some of that living element went out to America 
and the colonies. It founded free institutions, 
established a wider equality, liberated a play for 
individual initiative. It left England grayer 
and heavier than in its great epochs. Next to the 
31 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

sleeping strength of the Russian peasantry, the 
English mass is the slowest-moving force in the 
modern European world. 

Observers of England have written down this 
slackening of effort as laziness. But "laziness" 
and "drink" and "thriftlessness" are the inva- 
riable resort of an imperfect analysis. What 
was the cause of that laziness? I believe that we 
have the answer in the weakness that sets in when 
an organism gets out of touch with its environ- 
ment. All the conditions of modern life were 
changing rapidly, and England revealed little 
adaptability in fitting herself to the change. 
What the war has made clear is that England 
was losing her stride in the modern world. She 
was lagging in agriculture, industiy, and applied 
science. To put the matter clearly and frankly, 
an anemia had spread over English life in recent 
generations. Through lack of vocational train- 
ing, the working-man had lost ambition, and his 
power of production had lost pace with German 
and American workers. The huddled, sheltered, 
unproductive lives of middle-class people were 
often without direction and purpose because they 
were untrained. The upper class had lost power 
32 



LABOR 

of constructive leadership in the traditions of an 
education unrelated to the realities of modern 
hfe. 

This war has wakened England. It has made 
the working-man work at full-tilt for the first 
time in his hfe. He has been wiUing to do it, 
because the product served a national purpose 
instead of the profit of another person. He has 
been physically able to do it, because an increased 
wage gave him better food. He has discovered 
how to do it, because the pressure of necessity has 
unlocked brain cells which in ordinary times 
would have required a term of education to 
coordinate. The war has turned the middle-class 
home inside out, and freed the respectable unem- 
ployed into usefulness. It has given new and 
more active forms of employment to women 
caught in domestic sei-vice and the parasitic trades 
of "refined" di-essmaking, millinery, and candy 
manufacture. Finally, the war has given a 
career to upper-class Enghshmen. For the first 
time in their lives they feel they have found some- 
thing active to do through noble sacrifice. The 
sigh of relief that went up at the discoveiy that 
life was at last worth living, if only because of its 
33 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

brevity, was echoed in the poetry of officers as it 
drifted back from the trenches. 

The key to the present situation is the sudden 
enormous release of energy. Male labor has felt 
it, and has responded with increased production. 
Women have felt it, and have transferred their 
activities from low-pressure drudgery and par- 
asitic employments to the main channels of 
industry. The directors and capitalists have felt 
it, and have sanctioned new areas of production, 
new automatic machinery, and more liberal terms 
for their workers. The state has felt it, and has 
taken a direct hand in the encouragement and 
control of industry. An incredible amount of 
energy has been let loose in England which before 
was lying latent in underpaid, undernourished 
working-men, in individualistic businessmen, in 
unimaginative government officials, in extra 
daughters in the household, and in unattached 
women of a moderate income and no profession. 

A spiritual transformation would come to pass 
if atoms were dissociated and the latent energy in 
matter released into a torpid world. What coal 
and electricity and radiimi accomplish in burning 
through obstruction and speeding up life would 
34 



LABOR 

be transcended by that new amazing release of 
force. But that very thing took place in the 
social organism. Industrial labor and the home 
were each an "indestiiictible atom," the final unit 
that could not be pried open, or separated into 
parts. And suddenly it was broken up, and an 
immense energy set going in the community. 

To maintain this increased activity after the 
war will require an enlarged system of state edu- 
cation. Vocational training must be given to 
the young in place of the present laissez-faire 
policy, which lets children slip out from control, 
at the age of fourteen and even younger, into 
"blind-alley" pursuits. England will have to be 
remodeled or else lose her place among the 
nations. 

If she fails to take action in accelerating indus- 
trial democracy, she will see her surviving young 
men saihng in droves for Canada and Australia. 
The colonies are far-sighted, and their prop- 
aganda in England is continuous, and has gi-eatly 
increased since the beginning of the war. Show- 
windows on the Strand and King's Road, and like 
strategic points of great cities, are filled with the 
genial products of the soil and the mines, — ears 
35 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

of grain and slags of metal, — and the background 
a gay painting of an overseas city, with its hos- 
pitable harbor. Pleasant-voiced and energetic 
gentlemen inside the roomy, prosperous offices 
tell you what you can make of your life if you pull 
up stakes and come with them to the new lands. 
If England fails, she will be stripped of men, and 
will become a feminist nation. But she will not 
fail. The penalty is too severe. 

It would be easy to play the role of a prophet 
here, and ride a radical gallop through the coming 
England. But I have consistently limited this 
outline to the tendencies already under way, to 
the currents already running. I have struck out 
the minimum of social remodeling, as recognized 
by middle-of-the-way publicists. I can quote 
"The Saturday Review" on a minimum wage for 
agricultural labor, "The Times" on the idea of 
national syndication, the Government on the 
"pigsty" in which the farm-laborer has been 
forced to live, and Mr. Asquith on woman's claim 
to a vote on the basis of her war work. 

To suppose that these changes are going 
through gracefully is to dream in the dayhght. 
They are coming jerkily, unevenly. Nothing 



LABOR 

will be granted except as it is forced. I have 
heard talk by persons in well-to-do homes about 
the new brotherhood of the trenches. One of the 
most distinguished English writers said to me : 

"Do you think working-men will ever feel 
bitterly again, now that they have seen their 
officers leading them and dying for them?" 

It did not occur to her to inquire how gallantly 
in an infantrj^ charge would prove a substitute 
for a living wage. There will be brotherhood 
after the war if the privileged classes pay a hving 
wage; but from what some of their represent- 
atives have said to me I gather that brotherhood is 
to be practised by the workers in ceasing to 
agitate for the basic conditions of a decent life. 

Not much of this emancipation is being made 
in love. It has largely come by the clever use of 
force, and what it brings will be like the gains of 
war for territory — areas soaked with human 
tears, breeding-places of fresh dissension. The 
eternal questions will beat in again after the new 
order is established. Is a living wage the final 
answer to the homesickness of the human spirit? 
Does a materialistic conception of life satisfy the 
longing of the heart? Are the claims of beauty 
37 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

met by uniform rows of neat little dwellings and 
by sanitary factories? Have we really crossed 
the great divide and arrived finally in the smi- 
shine? One doubts it. The life of the spirit is 
not so easily satisfied. But as in the present war 
of arms political differences are buried, art and 
poetry forgotten, and all the national will focused 
on this one thing to do, so in this gi'eater struggle 
the vast complexities of hfe are overlooked for 
the sake of a working program of action and 
a sharp summary. Happiness and morality, 
beauty and religion, are left to take care of them- 
selves. 

It is not from brotherly love that an increased 
cooperation between the directors and the workers 
is being established, but because without cooper- 
ation the production of wealth is lessened, capital 
is diminished, and wages are decreased. That 
cooperation is not secured by telling the laborer 
to "be good," to remember the nation, and to for- 
get his wage. The capitalist of the past has been 
indifferent to the welfare of his workers. He 
has had his mind on individual profit, not on 
national wealth. If he acts in the future as he 
has in the past, extracting an immediate high 
38 



LABOR 

profit at the expense of the worker, and therefore 
of the national wealth, the control will be taken 
from him, and will pass over automatically into 
the hands of the democracy. It rests with the 
capitalists themselves whether they and their sys- 
tem will survive or whether their function will be 
taken over by the industrial group and the state. 
Capital and labor are a permanent institution; 
but the capitalist, unhke the laborer, is by no 
means an indispensable unit in the institution. 
If the capitahst will handle himself in relation to 
his employees as the French officer does in rela- 
tion to his men, he can postpone his extinction 
indefinitely. If he develops a democracy of spirit 
and attitude, taking less profits and paying 
higher wages, exercising leadership by intelli- 
gence and sympathy, and permitting labor a voice 
in working conditions, he will remain in partial 
control of a diminished realm for the immediate 
future at least. As fast as he fails he will be 
ousted. 

Discipline and responsibility are the essentials 
for the new life just beginning, and they rest with 
equal weight on employer and employee. They 
are two words which had become unpopular in 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

our recent philosophy of life, because the qual- 
ities themselves were out of favor. But the war 
has revealed their ancient worth under the cake of 
modernism. 

The faults of the English, as I see them, are an 
almost incorrigible mental torpidness, which is 
slow to see a new situation and obstinate to move 
even when seeing it; a deep-rooted belief in the 
class system; an unconscious arrogance; and a 
suppression of the emotional life. As the result 
of these limitations in insight and sympathy, the 
English race has been backward in the betterment 
of its own people. It has overvv^orked and under- 
paid its own sons and daughters till a portion of 
its population rots in foul slums. 

A silent, slow-moving, but determined will, a 
constancy of purpose, a standard of conduct, 
often fallen short of, but rather consistently 
aimed at, are, I think, the saving characteristics 
of English character. By reason of these virtues, 
— and they are supreme virtues, — when the Eng- 
lish race starts to right a wrong, it goes through 
with the work to the end. It has now set itself 
to give justice to its workers. The social move- 
40 



LABOR 

ment is more surely on its way in England than 
in any other country of Europe. 

Human history has moved in cycles, and war 
has often marked the cesura. The French 
Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and the inven- 
tion of machinery altered the face of the world 
and refashioned its inner life. We are to-day 
in the presence of an industrial revolution as vast 
as that of a century ago. We in America shall be 
wise if we, like England, practise preparedness 
not only in the obvious surface requirements of 
dreadnoughts and citizen armies, but in the pro- 
found modifications of the social structure and 
consciousness. 

THE DISCOVERY 

Any one who looks forward to a peace on earth 
following the war of the trenches is going to be 
present at a surprise-j)arty. The workers are 
gathering themselves for a mighty effort which 
will make the French railway ^rike and the Eng- 
lish mine and transport strikes look like an after- 
noon tea. The issue will be precipitated when 
the Government and the employers fail to restore 
41 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

the old trade-union rules and regulations. They 
cannot restore them because the conditions have 
changed in the last two years. New automatic 
machinery and the entrance of male and female 
semi-skilled workers have made it impossible to 
restore the old system, which was adapted to the 
old conditions. Let me quote from a careful 
investigation made by experts: 

Many of the men who return from the trenches to 
the great munition and shipbuilding centers are, within 
a few weeks of their return, among those who exhibit 
most actively their discontent with present conditions. 
Among those who have fought in Flanders or who 
have been employed in making shells at home, there are 
many who look forward to a great social upheaval 
following the war. It is the testimony of responsible 
observers on the spot that some of our greatest in- 
dustrial centers are even now in a state of incipient 
revolt. To a very large number of the men now in 
the ranks, the fight against Germany is a fight against 
*'Prussianism," and the spirit of Prussianism represents 
to them only an extreme example of that to which 
they object in the industrial and social institutions of 
their own country. They regard the present struggle 
as closely connected with the campaign against capital- 
ist and class-domination at home. 

Unfortunately some of the results of the war itself, 
42 



LABOR 

such as the Munitions Acts and the Compulsion Acts, 
have intensified this identification of external and in- 
ternal "enemies." We are not discussing the necessity 
of these measures. The point is that the working of 
these acts and the tribunals created under them has 
given rise to an amount of deep and widespread re- 
sentment which is the more dangerous because it is 
largely inarticulate. It is particularly dangerous be- 
cause it tends to discredit in general working class 
opinion that section of labor which looks to the im- 
provement of industrial conditions by negotiation or by 
legislative action, and to strengthen the hands of the 
party which preaches doctrines of wrecking and ap- 
propriation. 

The war has not put an end to industrial unrest. 
Every one of the old causes of dispute remains, and 
others of a more serious nature have been added in 
the course of the war. The very moderation and un- 
selfishness shown by the responsible leaders of organ- 
ized labor are looked upon by important sections of 
their following as a betrayal of the cause and by some 
employers as a tactical opportunity. 

What is the answer? No half-way solution, 
no artificial "faked" restoration, no "brotherhood 
of the trenches," no turning of the attention of 
labor to "higher things" by a national mission, 
will suffice to meet the imperious demands of five 
43 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

million men who have felt the rhythm and 
momentum of victorious organization. There is 
only one answer which will avail. That answer 
is democratic control. It can come in either of 
two ways. It can come by the graceful conces- 
sion of the employing class. If it does not come 
in that way, it will come by the overwhelming 
force exerted by general limitation of output and 
by wide-spread strikes. And if these prove slow, 
then there is the possibility of what a Scotch 
employer recently declared. He said, "As I look 
into the future, I see nothing but bloodshed." 

There is no need of bloodshed, which is a crude 
and unsatisfactory way of determining questions 
as complex as the division of profits, the limits of 
fatigue, the conditions of production. 

Let us consider the principle of democratic 
control in detail. It is sensible, and industrial 
warfare is senseless, as senseless as international 
warfare. What is it exactly that the worker 
wishes? Shorter hours and higher wages? Yes. 
Better conditions of working and living? Yes. 
But all these are servants of a better thing yet — 
status. Status is standing. It is that position 
which a person or a class holds in society. The 
44 



LABOR 

desire for status is the desire for a good life — a 
life raised above slavery and injustice, and free 
to develop its creative impulses. No one of intel- 
ligence wishes labor to thrust in and muddle 
matters which it has n't the executive equipment 
for handling. At its present stage of devel- 
opment labor cannot organize the market and sell 
the product. It cannot equip the factory and 
conduct the operating and selling conditions. 
Management in that sense is beyond its powers. 
Education, discipline, experience, the creation of 
a specialized kind of brain power — all are neces- 
sary to organize industry and conduct its multiple 
processes. 

But what labor can manage and possesses the 
right to manage, but has not received the permis- 
sion to manage, are the conditions of its own Mfe 
— its working life and its leisure life. The instal- 
lation of new processes, the introduction of new 
machiner}% the injection of new workers — all 
these alterations of working conditions have been 
imposed upon the workers, as one puts a new 
harness on a horse, or shifts him from the plow 
to the tread-mill. The workers have built up 
their own system of protective devices to meet 
45 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

these impositions of the ohgarchy in control of 
them. They have hmited the output by "going 
gently" with the work. They have limited the 
number of apprentices. They have practised 
sabotage and called strikes. They had no other 
weapons. The result of these protective devices 
has been to lessen the volume of production, to 
give capital a smaller return on its investment, 
and to cut down wages. The policy has been 
bad for employer and employee. 

It is not altogether the control which capital 
and management exercise over the mechanism of 
production which creates industrial um-est. It 
is in part the control over labor. Absence of 
knowledge is the cause of some of the misunder- 
standing. The workers understand nothing of 
overhead charges, depreciation of plant, the risks 
of capital. They know nothing of the policy 
connected with buying and selling. The em- 
ployers know nothing of the effect of a new 
process on the nervous system of the worker. 
They know nothing of the fatigue from overwork 
or monotony. They make no study of a standard 
of living. They go blindly ahead, as if men and 
machinery alike were tools to be manipulated. 
46 



LABOR 

That an aim of industry should be a good life for 
the worker is an idea which would sound strangely 
in their ears. 

What is needed between employer and worker 
is a pooling of knowledge, a frank exchange of 
the point of view, and a compromise in manage- 
ment. The way out is through democratic con- 
trol over the conditions of work. The worker 
must be consulted when new machinery is 
installed. The effect of it must be studied in 
relation to monotony, fatigue, and danger. The 
profits from its introduction must be equitably 
divided between the employer and the worker. 
The consultation must not be a form of words. 
It must be a consultation where the voice of the 
worker is of equal authority with that of the exec- 
utive management. The worker must be in a 
position to control the conditions of his putting 
forth of labor power. The new conditions, 
created by the new machine with its special proc- 
esses, must be such that the balance of justice, 
established under the old conditions, is not dis- 
turbed by the alteration. The belief that every 
change, such as "scientific management," in- 
stituted by the employer, has enabled him to pick 
47 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

up slack and take a tighter cinch-grip on labor, 
has led labor to resist labor-saving devices and 
modern methods of speeding-up. The emploj^er 
has been partly defeated whenever he has played 
a "lone hand." And labor, in defeating him, has 
lessened the volume of production from which 
higher wages are derived.^ 

1 Consider tlie analysis Sir Hugh Bell has recently made of his 
own costs, as given in "The Round Table" for September, 1916. 

"His firm makes steel, the raw materials for which are produced 
from his own coal and iron mines and limestone quarries. In every 
ton of steel made, 70 to 75 per cent, of the cost goes as the wages 
of labor. There remains 25 to 30 per cent, for all other outgoings, 
including profit. The turnover on a steel business in this country 
about equals the capital invested. If his profit amounts to 10 per 
cent., of which 3 per cent, at least must go back into the business 
to maintain the works, he thinks himself lucky, and the 7 per cent, 
left must cover interest on his capital as well as the profits for his 
enterprise and risk. The remaining 15 to 20 per cent, goes to 
cover rates and taxes, railway freights and so forth, part of which 
again goes to labor. 

"Out of what fund," as Sir Hugh Bell asks, "is he to pay a 10 
per cent, increase in wages?" If he paid 10 per cent, more, he 
would have no profit at all and could not continue the business. 
The increase in wages, then, can only come from within, by greater 
efficiency in management or greater production per man. There 
are, no doubt, many businesses which have some monopoly value, 
where capital secures a greater return; there are others where the 
return is less and the business is decaying. But except when ab- 
normal conditions arise, as with shipping now, or when a monopoly 
or a patent exists, the picture given by Sir Hugh Bell is more or 
less applicable to indiistry in general. 

No paper resolution, no legislation, and no economic theory can 
alter tlie facts of the industrial situation, but an adjustment and a 
gain can be made by a new release of productive energy on the 

48 



LABOR 

What is the way out? Surely it is this: in- 
stall the new machinery, establish scientific man- 
agement, but explain the process, adjust the 
wage-scale, debate the problems of fatigue, 
monotony, and danger, safeguard the standard 
of living, study the new conditions, and work out 
an agreement between employer and workers. 

Already there is a rapprochement between the 
larger groups. In the crisis of 1915, Mr. Ten- 
nant summoned the labor leaders to organize the 
forces of labor. The employers and the Govern- 
ment were helpless unless aided by the workers 
themselves. On that day, February 8, 1915, the 
principle of democratic control in industry was 
established in the modern state, never to be 
receded from. This system of joint committees 
had indeed long existed in the leading trades, 
where employers and union leaders met to settle 
disputes. But the white flag of truce was over 
the conference, while, outside, the battle raged. 
But Mr. Tennant by his bold measure raised the 
joint committee to the level of continuous medi- 
ation and consultation. These joint boards will 

part of the management and the men, by consultation between 
labor and capital, and by hard intellectual eflFort put on each detail 
of both the industrial process and the industrial relationship. 

49 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

be the method by which the Government, the 
employer, and the worker will discuss the break- 
down during war-time of the trade-union rules, 
and the substitute to be given in place of an 
impossible restoration. The joint board is part 
of the machinerj^ for reconstruction. The accept- 
ance of it is an acceptance of the principle of 
democratic control. 

That is the centralized and "parliamentary" 
side of the matter. But it deals with only half 
the problem. The other half is local government 
in the individual factory. No system of cen- 
tralization can ever so extend itself as to deal 
adequately with the dehcate various human mate- 
rial in the single factory. And for this a solution 
has been struck out. It is that of workshop 
councils, where the men sit in equal power with 
the management. It has been tried in a few 
places. It has worked excellently. There is one 
factoiy where no decision in several years has 
been appealed from. Disputes have died away. 
We shall hear much of "workshop councils" in 
the next five years. The experiment offers the 
one sane, peaceable way out of a struggle that, 
"unnegotiated," will throw industry into chaos. 
50 



LABOR 

Let us consider in detail what the workshop 
council will do. It will deal with the admission 
of unskilled workers into the factory, with piece- 
work prices, shop discipline, suspension and dis- 
missal, welfare, organization, and production, 
"time" rules, consideration of complaints, meth- 
ods of increasing efficiency, discussion of hours of 
work, and the necessity of periods of overtime, 
supervision of eating-halls, organization of rec- 
reation. The council will represent a depart- 
ment, and will send one representative for every 
fifty workers, for instance. Thus a department 
with 250 workmen will send five representatives. 
Sitting with the council in equal numbers will be 
the manager of the department and his assistants. 
For a large factory the departmental councils 
will meet and elect a "works council" — twenty- 
five workers and twenty-five managers and assist- 
ants, — who will consider matters touching the 
works as a whole. On questions such as fixing 
day wages and the level that governs piece wages, 
the employer will continue to deal direct with the 
trade-unions, but the piece rates themselves will 
be arranged by the workshop councils. 

This is all experimental and tentative. It may 
51 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

break down under bitterness or trickery. It may 
be manipulated by clever men. Chesterton, who 
is a hearty medievalist, desiring general peasant 
proprietorship, calls the scheme of "a certain 
proletarian representation in the employer's 
council" "the man-trap of the management." 
He says that "the first few labor representatives 
filtered cautiously into the 'management' will be 
beaten at the game. That is why they will be 
allowed to play at it." 

Perhaps, but the idea is in line with democratic 
principle. It is being worked at by the best 
minds in England, and it offers the one peaceable 
way out of a strife that grows more intense every 
month. 

The situation is this: labor is going to 
demand higher wages. To obtain them, labor 
must produce more goods, and the employer must 
improve his methods, install new machinery, and 
consult the worker. Some employers will meet 
the situation with superlatively good management 
— a management that will welcome the worker 
to a share in control, and will increase production 
and wages without financial loss. Some em- 
ployers will make decreased profits, some will go 
62 



LABOR 

to the wall, and some will fight the new condi- 
tions. If wisdom prevails on both sides, a new 
constitution of industry will be achieved. 

DEMOCEATIC CONTROL 

In this age, when psychology is taking over 
new reahns of fact every year, it is increasingly 
difficult to use a phrase about society which is 
accurate in describing the instinctive life of forty- 
five million persons. Yet one must have a vocab- 
ulary in order to tallv. The phrase "democratic 
control" appears throughout this book. By the 
principle of democratic control I mean the appli- 
cation to the institutions of property and the 
state of the sum of the desires and impulses of the 
persons composing the modern nation-state. 
Those desires and impulses are often thought 
about and definitely expressed in a reasoned pro- 
gram of action, as in the gradually developing 
"will to war" of the British people. Often they 
are held only in the subconscious mind, exploding 
through from time to time in blind action. But 
the desires and impulses of the mass people have 
to-day a power in shaping legislation, controlling 
administration, adapting environment, and estab- 
53 



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lishing new social relationships, which, through 
lack of organization, they did not possess in 
earlier periods. Suppression, thwarting, sub- 
mission are not acceptable to the people of a 
modern nation, and they have determined to live 
a more creative life. 

"Democratic control" is a convenient phrase 
for describing what is taking place in society, 
which we express concretely by using the terms 
"labor movement," "woman movement," "wel- 
fare work," "British commonwealth," "rights of 
little nations." An increasing number of people 
are seeing what they want and are getting it. 
An increasing number of women are desiring a 
living wage and the vote, and they are organizing 
their thought and will to obtain them. An 
increasing number of manual workers are wishing 
to control the conditions of their working life, and 
they are acting together in order to win that 
status. The dominions are growing restive under 
an imperial policy conducted by England alone, 
and they are preparing to take a hand in the 
shaping of that policy. These are instances of 
democratic control — the apphcation to govern- 
54 



LABOR 

merit and contract of the sum of the desires and 
impulses of milhons of persons. 

Our modern social movement, which is seeking 
to achieve the organized state under democratic 
control, operates through private ownership and 
individuahsm (property), cooperation, state con- 
trol (socialism), and occupational association 
(syndicalism). The socialistic state has greatly 
extended its function in the present war. Non- 
local association, or syndicalism, is increasing its 
strength through workshop councils, joint boards, 
and the various organizations of common occupa- 
tion, trade-unions, "industi-ial workers," gilds. 
Cooperation for production is powerful in Ire- 
land, and cooperation for distribution has had a 
long and successful history in England. Prop- 
erty — the idea of the "small owner," the "peasant 
proprietor," one's right to one's "very own," is 
still intrenched. Any dogmatism on the claims 
of one of these against the others must to-day be 
rejected as not fitting the facts. Any prophecy 
as to which will contribute most decisively to 
the future organization of society is gratuitous. 
Each overlaps upon the others, but all are 
55 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

expressions of the impulse toward freedom, and 
the social movement is the resultant. 

Particular tendencies in the social movement 
cannot be exclusively identified with particular 
psychological dispositions. Dr. Graham Wallas 
writes to me: 

The extension of democratic control is of course 
dependent on knowledge, or imagination, as well as im- 
pulse. More exactly, impulse in the modern world has 
to be stimulated rather by our ideas of what we can- 
not see or hear than by our direct sensations. The 
Railway Men's Union is growing stronger because in- 
dividual railwaymen are getting a more definite con- 
ception of the capital- and state-machine instead of a 
vague acquiescence in a social order felt to be irresisti- 
ble (or, rather, not felt to be resistible) ; because they 
have a conception of improving their position neither 
by individual industry nor by state action, but by syn- 
dical action; because they have learnt by experience 
that improvement can be brought about by syndical 
action. 

There is not half enough concentrated thinking 
being done. The Labor party in its latest con- 
ference displayed as much hot feeling over in- 
finitesimal details as the protagonists in an Irish 
election, and it dissolved without any large 
56 



LABOR 

program. The speaker's Conference on Elec- 
toral Reform "approved" of the principle of 
woman suffrage, but failed to include a measure 
to obtain it in the resolutions. No synthetic plan 
of reconstruction is anywhere in sight. What 
will happen is that the pressure of necessity will 
force reforms, bill by bill, detail by detail. This 
is a costly way. It is the way in which shells were 
substituted for shrapnel. It means that each 
gi'oup in the community will fight like a lone wolf 
for its bone. It is possible that the engineering 
trades, for instance, which will come out on top 
during the first years of peace, will leave women 
and unskilled men to fight their own battles, fail- 
ing to see that a standard of hving and high 
production are principles established only by 
combined effort. 

Each class division in the community is sulking 
in its corner and hugging half a dozen pet 
fallacies. The employer still believes that the 
aim of industry is a product rather than human 
welfare. He still beheves in laissez-faire, "im- 
mutable laws of supply and demand," a servile 
wage class. The worker still regards "economic 
determinism" as governing the multitudinous 
57 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

currents of human history. He still believes that 
there is only a certain fixed amount of work and 
money to be ladled out, a pool unfed by expand- 
ing production. He still believes in limiting the 
number of workers and circumscribing the areas 
and methods of production. He still distrusts 
the intellect as an instrmnent for estabhshing 
justice. 

But the principle of democratic control forces 
its own way irresistibly through the storm of 
words and conflicting purposes. If only one man 
in England apprehended it, it would have to 
prevail, for it leads out of chaos. It abohshes 
ignorance and poverty. It releases the good-will 
which lies hidden and obstructed in our nature. 
It promises equahty, and perhaps some day will 
bring in beauty to a troubled and unlovely world. 

THE PIONEERS 

England is becoming an industrial democracy, 
but the talk is all of speeding up production and 
making a better machine of the worker. The 
solutions of reconstruction necessitate a consider- 
ation of new automatic machines and subdivisions 
of repetitive processes. There is talk of a still 
58 



LABOR 

hotter war of competition than in the old dreary- 
factory days. All these discussions of the British 
Association and "The Round Table" and the 
Fabians and the government reports lean in the 
du'ection of Americanizing and Germanizing 
England. When you have made a good work- 
man in that sense, you have n't made a good man 
at all. You have made a sharpened tool of pro- 
duction or a narrow, concentrated huckster. I 
feel in all this program something alien to the 
English nature. Half the fine virtues of a 
liberal life lie outside such competitive industrial 
requirements. 

Once the question of "wages and hours" is 
settled, and that is only a detail of management 
which will be settled, we reach the heart of the 
problem. Can the curse be removed from 
machinery? Can joy be put into work? What 
of the jobs that are monotonous? Will they 
lessen in number? 

The instant that joy enters into work the 
problems of overtime and fatigue disappear. 
Elasticity of spirit gives a swift recovery. Free- 
dom to choose one's work, the right to arrange 
one's working conditions, skill in doing the task, 
59 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

pride in the product — these are the elements that 
result in "joy in work," are thej^ not? What 
promise does the futm-e give us that this quality 
of joy will enter into the work of the masses ? An 
eight-hour day and a minimmn wage of forty 
shilUngs a week do not help us here at all. Will 
the increasing control of working conditions by 
the workers themselves remove this curse of 
monotony, the grind of the machines on the 
hmiian spu'it ? Will the fact of control alter the 
effect of the work, so that automatically it will 
pass from a condition of slavery to a condition of 
freedom? W^ill the worker, in exercising his will 
on the terms and conditions of his employment, 
find a full release for his powers, with the result- 
ing sense of self-expression and its accompani- 
ment of joy? 

Or will the increasing control of working condi- 
tions by the workers result in a fundamental 
remodehng of the nature of the work itself? If 
so, in what forms will that change show itself? 
For instance, the happiest communities of the 
past were surely settled agricultural communities. 
Will the workers in part return to the land, 
rendered more fertile by modern methods of 
60 



LABOR 

intensive agriculture? Will there be an era of 
noble building like that of the twelfth century? 
Will the modern democracy find it worth while 
to create beauty? 

Then there remains the use of leisure. Are we 
to learn an art of living? Will creative activities 
be honored? Nothing is more striking in the 
last hundred years than the fact that the poet and 
the saint "do not count." They have lost control 
over the channels of power. The artist in any 
of the great forms has little influence to-day. 
is easy to reply, "Let the great artist come, and 
we will listen"; but to produce great persons, the 
heart of the people must be turned that way. 
We are not quiet enough or responsive enough to 
form and nourish such gi'o^vths. Not only are 
the masters of modern industry materialistic, but 
the workers are materialistic. The trade-union 
program, the socialist platform, the reforms of 
the social experts — all these center about matters 
of physical well-being and industrial efficiency. 
What has all this to do with outlook on life, the 
knowledge of true values, an understanding of the 
meaning and end of existence? Outlook on life 
is determined by the use of leisure — by the 
61 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

pictures one sees, the music one hears, the books 
one reads, the talk one shares, the games one 
plays. The only education an adult receives, 
apart from that of the working-day, with its 
repetitive processes for most employees, is in the 
recreation of his leisure hours. School ends for 
most of the human race at fourteen years of age. 
The lives of modern workers are dark with drudg- 
ery for the working shift and spattered with 
cheap surface sensation in the hours of release. 
Fatigue and excitement march together through 
our city streets. 

These are the two great questions of our time : 
Can the nature of work be ennobled? Can spir- 
itual values be restored to modern life? For 
fifteen years these questions of what use shall be 
made of Hfe under a true industrial democracy 
have seemed to me the most important, the least 
discussed questions of our day. Now that in- 
dustrial democracy is arriving in England, I have 
put these questions to the leaders of public opin- 
ion. I have talked with Lloyd-George, experts 
of the Home Office, of the work councils, with 
John Burns, Seebohm Rowntree, Snowden, But- 
ton, MacDonald, Mallon, every type of mind in 



LABOR 

the industrial struggle. No one person is respon- 
sible for the conclusions which I give, but they 
seem to me a just smnmary of the best English 
opinion. 

Will industry slide over into an old-fashioned 
balance between agriculture and factory labor? 
Can the curse be removed from machinery, so that 
the worker will find in his day's work some of the 
same lift and satisfaction which Gilbert K. 
Chesterton finds in writing books, who told me, 
"I have fun in writing my books"? These ques- 
tions have been wrestled with since machinery 
came in. Hate of the machine was voiced by 
Ruskin and Morris. The hope of a new and 
simpler civilization has been stated by Edward 
Carpenter. 

The answer is clear. The present tendencies 
of all the leading nations are altogether in this 
one direction of more productive power through 
machinery driven by skilled, semi-skilled, and 
unskilled workers. Whether there is not a 
wholly different sort of life possible, with a 
simpler organization and richer values; whether 
the old England of hardy seamen and quiet farm- 
ers and yeomen was not a more admirable place 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

than the modern city, is to pose an academic ques- 
tion in the face of an obvious overwhekning tend- 
ency. All the nations are becoming x\merican- 
ized and Germanized. The result is that a cheap, 
hasty product in unlimited quantity, a race for 
new markets, hustling and advertising are in com- 
mand of modern life. All that is fragrant and 
choice and spacious in the older England is be- 
ing caught into the whirl of these wheels. This 
tendency is summed up by two words : some call 
it progress, and some call it civilization. It is 
the judgment of experienced men that the mass of 
the people will never flock back to agriculture in 
an industrial country. England will not become 
more like Russia. On the contrary, Russia will 
become more Uke England. The machine is in 
permanent control of industrial life. New au- 
tomatic appliances will be created; new subdivi- 
sions of process will be devised. 

To offset this dead uniformity, there is the con- 
stant demand for new goods. No sooner has the 
manufacture of one article become standardized 
than the demand for something quite new arises. 
It is only after this has been manufactured for a 
considerable time on a large scale that its manu- 
64 



LABOR 

facture becomes standardized. Meanwhile there 
is much skilled work in connection with it. But 
the percentage of highly skilled men who make 
the tools, install them, and direct this new process 
is small. There remains the vast and ever- 
increasing mass of semi-skilled workers who per- 
form the endlessly repeated processes. The 
highly skilled man finds a measure of satisfaction 
in the exercise of his craft. A certain few ma- 
chines have a delicacy of touch, and turn out a 
beautiful product, so that those who tend them 
receive a pleasure in superintending the opera- 
tion. Seebohm Rowntree told me of a machine 
in his York factory which lays down three colors 
at one time on shiny paper, and does it with a 
finger manipulation which seems semi-human. 
The men in charge of this process thoroughly en- 
joy their silent partner. Work for them is not 
monotonous. But these workers of skill or happy 
processes are few in number compared with the 
milhons in industry. For the great majority of 
workers there is little joy in their tasks or small 
pride in the products. The worker does not look 
on the Mauretania and say to himself, "I built 
her," because he tooled the rivets which went into 
65 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

the engines, though that is exactly the thing 
which the workman did say eight centuries ago 
when he chiseled his masonic mark on the gray 
stone of the cathedral. To-day he seeks for an 
escape from the monotony of a weary process in 
other things than in the work itself. He regards 
machine labor as a drudgery. The series of mo- 
tions is beginning to become standardized. Ex- 
perts go through factories distributing cards that 
analyze the motions required to convert raw ma- 
terial into commodities. The worker is shown 
how to economize effort, how to make fewer 
strokes, and how to shorten the stroke, how to 
lessen the time of production from four hours to 
two hours and thirty-three minutes. This drift 
toward organization and mechanical efficiency 
will never be checked. It will gather momentum. 
The worker himself is often in favor of the auto- 
matic labor-saving machine if his standard of liv- 
ing is maintained and raised, as against the ma- 
chine that calls for an exercise of skill. He pre- 
fers to save his vitality, his mental reserve forces, 
for his life outside the factory, for the creation 
of social values in his neighborhood and the fur- 
therance of the causes that interest him. 
66 



LABOR 

There is a clever and aggressive school of in- 
dustriahsts in England who will try to speed up 
industry without winning the cooperation of the 
worker. They will seek to install a scientific 
piece rate based on time study of factory opera- 
tions, standardization of equipment, motion 
study of the actions of the worker in performing 
a piece of work, instruction-cards governing every 
bodily movement of every worker, and a set of 
"speeders-up" — speed boss, repair boss, shop dis- 
ciplinarian. This Americanizing of industry 
does not look genial to the British workman. 
He will not accept it if it precedes the installa- 
tion of work councils; that is, boards of control, 
in which he is represented. He will insist on his 
share in workshop control. He will obtain it. 
Then industrial organization will proceed along 
the inevl^ble lines of efficiency and scientific 
management. The further this tendency goes, 
the wider becomes the separation between the 
handful of skilled workers who shape the tools 
and set them up and the mass of unskilled work- 
ers directed by cards, routing, and scheduling. 

There will be no return to a peaceful peasant 
folk. The dreams of Ruskin and Wilham Mor- 
67 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

ris must be laid aside. The mechanical processes 
of industry cannot be humanized; they can only 
be mitigated. The relations between employer 
and employed can be humanized; the Welfare 
Department of the Government is humanizing 
them. Individual employers have long strug- 
gled to humanize them ; but this cooperation, this 
kindlier atmosphere, is itself only a mitigation of 
the conditions of work, and cannot alter the na- 
ture of the work. Not in the work itself, but in 
the creation of values outside the working shift, 
must the mass of people find their escape from 
monotony. As the worker receives his higher 
wage and his margin of leisure, he must by in- 
dividual and collective enterprise lift himself 
from the machine-made mediocrity of our mod- 
ern world. The worker will not become a man 
till after hours. A blessing can be wrung from 
the machine only on its own terms. It is a com- 
fort, although a stern comfort, to know the direc- 
tion in which we are going. Knowing that, we 
can govern the pace and better the road. Such 
is the answer on removing the curse from machin- 
ery. 

What of the worker's conditions after hours? 
68 



LABOR 

The solutions of almost all our social problems 
are already in operation locally in patches in parts 
of Europe. Denmark has solved one problem, 
Sweden another, and Belgium a third. It needs 
now experts to pool these solutions into a pro- 
gram and apply it wholesale. Transportation 
and housing lie at the heart of the problem of en- 
vironment. Where the worker lives, and in what 
sort of home he lives, determine the conditions 
that surround him outside his working hours. 
State action here is necessar}^ and state action 
will be taken. 

For two years prior to the outbreak of war a 
committee had been sitting to consider land and 
housing reform, and had brought in definite and 
far-reaching proposals. These proposals were 
being very seriously considered by the Govern- 
ment. It is probable that a bill covering many 
of the reforms suggested would have been intro- 
duced but for the war. There is every reason to 
believe that these reforms will come to the front 
as soon as the war is over. One of these meas- 
ures deals with compulsory town-planning. In- 
stead of building from thirty to forty houses to 
the acre, only thirteen will be allowed. This 
69 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

means that every workman's house will have its 
decent privacy, its bit of garden. Another pro- 
posal is for a system of general transportation by 
means of light railways. Belgium has had about 
one hundred miles of light railways for every 
three and a half miles in England. This gives a 
network of cheap transportation covering the en- 
tire area around the great industrial centers. I 
used to ride into Ghent from Zele, from Melle, 
from every one of the smaller towns outside the 
city. Wherever I have stayed in Belgium, 
whether at Furnes, Dixmude, La Panne, Nieu- 
port, or Ostend, the whole country-side was 
woven with tiny steam railways, carrying pas- 
sengers for a few sous. This system gives easy 
transportation for the worker from his home in 
the suburb to his lathe in the factory. It means 
that he can live on a little land and, with his fam- 
ily, carry on light gardening, reducing his cost 
of living, with an occasional sale in the market. 
The combination of the two measures, — town- 
planning and cheap transportation, — applied to 
England, will end the slum by draining it dry, 
and by substituting a village community in pleas- 
ant surroundings. It means a gradual, but, in 
70 



LABOR 

the end, complete, remaking of the environment 
for the workers. And an environmental change 
so vast will recreate the physical life of the na- 
tion. 

These measures are nothing but simple primi- 
tive justice. They are merely animal rights. 
They do not deal with the basic spiritual needs 
of the community. Having won his emancipa- 
tion from poverty and the serf conditions of in- 
dustry, the worker must face the intellectual bar- 
renness of his life. Through no fault of his own 
he is poorly fitted for the role he is now called on 
to play. He is uneducated, unimaginative, un- 
equipped to create the values in life which an 
industrial democracy will require in order to sur- 
vive the di'eary hours of monotonous machine 
work, however shortened and however highly 
paid, and the increased hours of leisure. Fail- 
ing a solution for his overplus of vitality and for 
the unemploj^ment of his higher faculties, he will 
be thrown back on rebellion as release for his un- 
functioning energy. 

The supreme need of English labor is wise 
leadership. That leadership will not allow this 
new energy, released by better wages and short- 
•71 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

ened hours, to spend itself in strife and rebellion. 
The tragedy of the labor movement has been that 
its leaders have often been sucked up by the Gov- 
ernment, becoming official investigators, parli- 
amentarians, committee-men. Or the skilled in- 
telhgent worker has passed over into the ranks 
of the employer. The succession of lost leaders 
has quenched the enthusiasm of the mass of the 
people, lessened their power of vision, and made 
them cynical of lifting themselves to a full, free 
life. If the shoulders of the people are used by 
their most vital representatives only to be climbed 
upon into positions of individual prestige, the 
people themselves will be little bettered by gen- 
erating men of power. The labor leader must 
find his career inside his class. He must forego 
the easy advantages of a thousand-pound gov- 
ernment salary. There are few wise leaders to- 
daj^ inside the ranks of the workers. 

As the result, the immediately practical next 
steps in the social revolution are clearly seen, but 
the creative readjustment that will make Eng- 
land into a free, liberal community is not seen. 
The worker is about to share control of his work- 
ing conditions with the "management." His 
72 



LABOR 

hours will be shortened, his wages will be in- 
creased, — the increase has already reached about 
one third of the industrial population, — he will 
have a voice in workshop conditions, his physical 
environment in his leisure hours will be amelior- 
ated. His house will be situated in a decent com- 
munity, with space around it for flowers and home 
gardening. Vocational training will be given to 
his children. This will come by a series of ex- 
perimental measures, beginning with part-time 
employment in industry for those between the 
ages of fourteen and eighteen. 

But a greater reconstruction than all this 
journeyman's work is needed. If the workers 
are able to develop leaders and to retain them, 
that leadership will concern itself in part with 
the cultural life of the people. There is no great 
future for labor except through education. The 
American film, the public house, the ha'penny 
newspaper, and professional foot-ball are not 
sufficient of themselves to make a new world. If 
English labor contents itself with gains in the 
mechanic and physical conditions of life, the form 
of solution will crystallize into its own kind of 
neo-Toryism. The same meaningless material- 
73 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

ism will continue to sterilize and wither the minds 
of men. Now the minds of officials and experts, 
workers and employers, are malleable, now the 
national consciousness has been melted into hot 
and fluid form. Now is the time to shape and 
fuse that molten mass. 

"We are going around to-day with a different 
brain under our cap from the brain we carried 
three years ago," a leading official of the Amal- 
gamated Society of Engineers said to me. 

This is true of him and his fellow- workers, true 
of the politicians, and true of the employers. 
Before that brain cools to a new case-bound 
orthodoxy it must come to grips with larger prin- 
ciples of social reconstruction than any it has 
been dealing with in trade-union regulations. 
There is no discharge in this war. We need a 
new community, eager and unsatisfied, aiming 
after a nobility of life of which the modern world 
has had no vision. Let labor look to its task. 
Time presses. In five years England will have 
cooled down, and the impulse of the war, throw- 
ing old values into the furnace, will have spent it- 
self. Men will reproduce the old world, with its 
barrenness of materialism, its hunt after cheap 
74. 



LABOR 

amusements, its immense mediocrity, its spiritual 
deadness, its nervous restlessness, its suppres- 
sions of vitality, and its explosions of rebellion, 
the same old round of dirty little intrigue, be- 
cause there will be no gi'eat purpose to which life 
is directed, no creative dream of the people. 

And in command of the community will be the 
same old gang of clever politicians feeding out 
materialistic catchwords of "Peace and prosper- 
ity," the adroit editors ministering to sensation 
as a substitute for creative activity. If the work- 
ers dodge and postx)one this fundamental point 
in their emancipation, they will give us a world 
little better than the Victorian mess. They will 
give us something very like a prosperous Ameri- 
can industrial city such as Detroit. The privi- 
leged class, with its neat formulae of restricted 
education and established church, has long lost 
its control of the community. The brief reign 
of the captains of industry, contributing no ideas 
on ethics and social relationship, ended in August 
of 1914. Now comes the worker. Let him bet- 
ter the management of life. Patient, kindly, 
slow, very loyal to the man and the cause in which 
he believes, the English worker is the greatest 
75 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

democratic force in the world. For our own sal- 
vation we must call on him to use his brain. He 
allowed the first industrial revolution to swing in 
on toj) of him in its meanest and most sordid 
form. Now that he takes control of the second 
industrial revolution, he must not try to compress 
humanity into narrower terms than those which 
the innumerable varieties of the human spirit have 
always demanded. The masters of industry 
tried this, and wrecked their world. 

Into the forefront of their immediate program 
of action the workers must put the demand for 
an abolition of child labor and for the creation of 
a general, full-time elementary schooling up to 
the age of sixteen years. There must be sec- 
ondary and continuation schools for all promis- 
ing pupils up to the age of eighteen. There must 
be a larger number of universities, and a democ- 
ratization of all the universities. The best men 
among the workers must be as thoroughly 
equipped in modern science, economics, and so- 
ciology as the governing class used to be in the 
humanities. The hope of an enlightened democ- 
racy lies in the general extension of state educa- 
tion and in the expansion of individual initiative 
76 



LABOR 

in such experiments for adults as the Workers' 
Educational Association. 

But the workers must insist that the education 
shall not be limited to vocational training, to 
science of research and application, to the impart- 
ing of facts. Education must give an interpre- 
tation of life. It must construct and impart a 
system of ethics fitted to our time. A living 
wage is no answer to such a tangle as that of sex ; 
it is no answer to the concerns of empire and the 
treatment of the colored races. These are ethical 
matters, demanding hard thinking and new in- 
terpretations of old values. There are a dozen 
problems clamoring for an answer, and on no one 
of them is there an adequate body of recorded 
facts, with the tendencies deduced from them. 
Apparently, everything is to be solved by plung- 
ing boldly into activity and letting results come. 
What one feels the absence of in the labor move- 
ment is fundamental brain-work. Here are new 
processes being developed, new areas opened, a 
revolutionary shifting of the directive control of 
the modern world from the little liistoric group 
of captains to the vast army of the people them- 
selves; and yet there is no reahzation that so 
77 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

mighty a transfer of forces calls for a philosophy 
and ethics of its own. If the workers fail us in 
this, the patient old-time spirit will brush aside 
their little artificial structure like an empty shell 
and begin building again. 

The whole range of moral problems has been 
left out of the reckoning. Changed conditions 
have resulted in an entire alteration of human re- 
lationship; but no one has stated the new ethics 
that will give guidance to the plain man's de- 
sire for a free, human, liberal life and for an an- 
swer to the meaning of life. The cry of Dosto- 
yevsky still lifts itself in our night: "Surely I 
have n't suffered simply that I, my crimes, and 
my sufferings may manure the soil of the future 
harmony for somebody else. I want to be there 
when every one suddenly understands what it has 
all been for. All the religions of the world are 
built on this longing, and I am a believer." 

What interpretation of modern life have we 
had? Not one. Frederick Taylor tells us to 
bind every thrust of the hand, every throb of the 
brain, into an iron scheme of regularity; Tolstoy 
tells us to jump out of the system altogether. 
But neither they nor our other literary and scien- 
78 



LABOR 

tific prophets have faced all the facts resohitely 
and thought their way through to a synthesis. 
Neither peasant mysticism nor scientific man- 
agement will put greatness into the lives that 
ninety out of every hundred obscure persons must 
live. We cannot hope for any saving word from 
the clever manipulators who cut the cost of pro- 
duction or from isolated artists, high above the 
combat. The word must come from the worker 
who, refusing to be factory-bound, turns from his 
machine after extracting a living wage and be- 
comes an interpreter for his fellows. We wait 
for this word. It will be a word made flesh, and 
it will dwell among us. It will not utter itself 
in handicraft conmiunities or on the lonely farm. 
It will neither flinch from the irmnutable eco- 
nomic basis of life nor try to feed the himfian spirit 
on applied science and novel devices of speed- 
ing-up alone. It will be a word of faith. 

Modern essayists write retrospectively of the 
"age of faith" as if faith was possible only among 
naive men in an age of mental darkness. But 
faith is the product of a vitality that is fully ex- 
pressed. It has therefore always been the pos- 
session of vital and effectual men, and is found 
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alike in Cromwell and Walt Whitman. It is as 
inevitably the sanction of wholesome living as joy- 
is the accompaniment and sanction of the crea- 
tive impulse in love and art. It is not a bhnd 
belief in what is not true. Faith is the expres- 
sion of a belief in life. The last century has been 
faithless not because it was dynamic and enlight- 
ened, but because it was darkened and weary. 
Democracy, with all its striving, has produced 
thus far only three men of genius, Mazzini, 
Lincoln, and Walt Whitman, and one of them 
said: 

Give me, give him or her I love this quenchless faith. 

Is it a dream? 

Nay, but the lack of it the dream. 

And failing it life's lore and wealth a dream, 

And all the world a dream. 

We moderns have side-stepped these funda- 
mental questions of a spiritual basis for existence 
because they troubled our surface life. Mean- 
while we heaped up the immeasurable inner forces 
of unanswered desires, unexpended spiritual vi- 
tality, and frustrated impulses until they finally 
came roaring through and overswept Europe. 

There was a time when religion answered this 
80 



LABOR 

need of the race for a vital expression. It still 
answers the need of a part of the community. 
There are liberal tendencies inside the chm'ch 
making for a faith which does not offend men's 
intellects and does not preach submission and re- 
nunciation. A small, but influential, group of 
workers still govern their lives by religious faith. 
But religion in any organized form, in any terms 
that are concrete and susceptible of measurement 
and analysis, has ceased to exist for the mass of 
the people. The old religious penalties and sanc- 
tions have been undermined by modern thought. 
Our new, vague social consciousness has failed 
as yet to develop any stringent system of ethics 
of its own, any code of relationship which is bind- 
ing. In labor a class war, in sex a medieval sup- 
pression, were the extent of present-day vision 
up to the hour of the war. For many genera- 
tions the life of spiritual aspiration has been 
starved. There is no longer any appeal made to 
it. Our development is altogether in the direc- 
tion of a materialistic conception of life, by leg- 
islation to conquer poverty, by machinery to 
achieve happiness. It looks on organization as 
the sole method of progress, efficiency as the end 
81 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

of being, science as answering all the needs of 
the human consciousness, and scientifically di- 
rected force as the final master of human affairs. 
It is not that the young or the poor go wrong, 
but that we all go wrong in our commercial civi- 
lization. We all live for sensation, for a visible 
standard of success in terms of sense-pleasures. 
To make life easy, to escape the old perils and 
hardships, the old disciplines and responsibilities, 
has become the chief aim of the modem commu- 
nity. 

England must make imperious demands of the 
new democracy. We refuse to rest satisfied with 
their improved housing, easier transportation, 
better working conditions. These are only the 
means to worthy living. They do not deal with 
the business of living itself. If the workers of 
England can create a community that "looks 
good," the example will be irresistible, and civ- 
ilization will respond to it in every nation. It is 
only in the creation of such communities, where 
the life of peace is a thing of joy, that we can 
look for the end of wars. But in their community 
they must find a place for the life of the spirit, 
for faith, for the finer values of nationality, for 



LABOR 

the rewards of merit, energy, and initiative. 
Because initiative in the old industrial serfdom 
only bound them the tighter to the management, 
they have practised "ca canny." But when they 
take control, failure in initiative will cut the tap- 
root and spinal nerve of their productivity, their 
prosperity, and final well-being. They are 
called on for a wholly other set of qualities than 
those which they have developed under the 
stresses of wage conflict. Every situation now 
demands a different reaction from the one pro- 
duced when a profiteering employer pulled the 
strings. Every new invention, every automatic 
machine, every shortened process, every device 
for directing muscular force that will cut the cost 
of production, is working for their benefit. But 
their newly used initiative must carry further 
than the workshop. It must wreak itself on the 
community, and devise a wisdom of life, fulfilling 
the inextinguishable longing of the human heart, 
which has gone unanswered in recent years till 
it found its answer in world war. 

Unquestionably in the last fifty years the labor 
movement, reacting vigorously against the de- 
fenses of privilege projected, often unconsciously. 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

by organized religion and class education, has 
made a di'ive against the life of the mind and 
the life of the spirit. Itself a vital movement, 
fighting for freedom and justice, it has included 
among its enemies forces which are themselves 
the very source of freedom and justice. It has 
done this because these forces had created insti- 
tutions, such as the established church and the 
great universities, which had lagged in the move- 
ment toward continuing emancipation. But la- 
bor cannot carry on a war with intelligence and 
spirituality without in the end being burned up 
by their fine violet ray. No philosophy of in- 
come will survive against the higher demands of 
the human spirit. Labor must be willing to 
work with these victorious forces, not against 
them. In scorning the free play of intellect in 
the realms of art and pure research, and in scorn- 
ing the efforts of the spirit to find an interpre- 
tation of life leading to spiritual peace, the labor 
movement has hardened and strengthened the 
very materialism which is its own worst enemy. 
If labor holds that it is too busy with its imme- 
diate emancipation to trouble with "theoretical 
considerations," it will be in the position of an 
84 



LABOR 

army which allows itself to be outflanked and 
surrounded because it is concentrated on a drive 
at the center. This is the gravest issue which 
labor faces. It has won its fight for a decent 
standard of living and for a measure of control 
in industry, but it will certainly lose the future 
if it continues to regard the writer, artist, and 
ethical teacher as parasites, and if it continues to 
see them as idlers who are living indolently on 
the hard work of better men. The labor move- 
ment is itself largely the product of a few think- 
ers, unconnected with organization, members of 
no party. It will destroy its own sources of 
supply and will become dried up if it discourages 
fresh liberations inside its own organism. Its 
one outlet into the future is its capacity for 
throwing out experiments in the creation of new 
varieties, like a plant. It must distrust its own 
orthodoxy and status quo, its own accepted for- 
mulae and popular teachers, as it distrusts the ut- 
terances of bishops and class-bound captains of 
industry. Only so will it manifest a principle 
of vitality charged with unfailing impulses. 
Falhng short in this, it will betray itself as only 
a single unrelated, short-hved impulse, clothing 
85 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

itself in one more limited institution, which will 
become its tomb. The worker must not only 
tolerate radical interpretative thinking outside 
his own ranks ; he must welcome it among his fel- 
lows. The initiative of his leisure hours must 
lead out into regions of which he has been shy 
and suspicious. He must develop his own teach- 
ers and prophets and artists. The men of 
Ghent had already done a little of this inside their 
cooperative community. The English worker 
must be as glad of his sculptor and his poet as he 
is of his labor leader. By the creative use of his 
leisure he will justify his control over the com- 
ing age. In place of smart revues and senti- 
mental plays perhaps he will give us drama, which 
has been an unused literary form for three cen- 
turies, worthy of revival. 

For one hundred j'-ears the world has been si- 
lent on the meaning of life. The masters were 
busy with their new devices to squeeze profits, 
and the workers were too heavy with their toil 
to think at all. But by these unseen moral com- 
pulsions, by the values we create, every free act 
of our life is governed. Everything we say and 
86 



LABOR 

do is shot through with the color and accent of 
our conception of hfe. 

If life is "playing the game," what is the game, 
and what are the rules? If life consists in mak- 
ing good, what is the good we are making, and 
what is the method of the making? If life is 
noblesse oblige, who are the elite, and what is the 
nature of their obligation? 

The Christian ethics, for instance, have never 
been tried. Do the workers intend to attempt 
them? Will they state them for us in modern 
terms? What precisely is our moral foundation 
to-day? What is the basis of our happiness and 
virtue? 

The suppression of the human spirit, the soul, 
— that congeries of impulse, desires, and mem- 
ories, — has gone on under the industrial revolu- 
tion with its applied science, its emphasis on real- 
ism, and its mechanical detail. How faintly the 
life of industry has taken hold of the human 
spirit was revealed by the great burst of released 
force that broke through with the war. The na- 
tions had been gathering steam for several gen- 
erations till they blew the hd off. All the time 
87 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

that the hands were busy in repetitive processes 
the secret subconscious mind was generating its 
own forces. Suddenly men saw a release from 
modern life, an escape from the machine, and a 
substitute for the materialistic conception of ex- 
istence, and seven nations went out with faith in 
their hearts. The workers themselves were 
among the first to go not because they were 
herded and conscripted, but because adventure 
and change and faith had returned to a very flat 
world. There came an ahnost universal exulta- 
tion that at last there was something in which to 
believe, something impersonal and vast on which 
the primal forces of emotion could discharge 
themselves. The old industrial order received 
its sentence then; but unless the new industrial 
democracy wins for us a creative peace, it, too, 
is doomed. It must give us an interpretation of 
life which commends itself to our nobler faculties 
and not alone to our body needs, or men will again 
turn themselves to killing in order to escape the 
greensickness of materialistic peace. 



88 



LABOR 

BEASONABLE SATISFACTION 

(No man in England has a better right to speak on the principles 
of reconstruction than A. E. Zimmern. He is known to all scholars 
as the author of that distinguished book, "The Greek Common- 
wealth.'" He is known to English labor as one of the promoters of 
the Workers' Educational Association. He has been a member of 
the Reconstruction Committee for the British Government. What 
he and his group believe is rather likely to influence the direction of 
tendency in the social movement, and some of their belief will prob- 
ably be enacted into law. He has very courteously given me this 
statement of his views on the problems of "The Pioneers.") 

My own view about the campaign for Ger- 
manizing England industrially is that it can't be 
done. The Englishman has a power of passive 
resistance equal to that of no one else in the 
world except it be the Turk. You can't drive 
him. German education would be impossible 
here because the Enghsh school-boy would not 
stand it. The same is true all round, and it is 
this tough and conservative individualism which 
has been the great obstacle to the swift adapta- 
tions which the war has made necessary. That 
being so, one is thrown back, when one looks for 
directions of reform, upon the alternative policy 
of making the workman think the work worth 
while. This brings one to the problem of "joy 
in work" and to the ideas and plans of Ruskin 
and Morris. 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

Ruskin and Morris were in many respects fool- 
ish medievalists, but I always think that in their 
insistence that the work itself, not wages or 
ownership or anything else, was the central prob- 
lem, they were in the true English tradition. I 
think the future historian of the English work- 
ing-class movement will regard it as a calamity 
that they never really converted the trade-union 
movement to take their ideas seriously and make 
them practical. Instead, the trade-unionists 
were gradually led astray (as Morris was, too) 
by the invasion of Marxian ideas from Germany, 
which has put the whole labor movement in a 
false position for a generation; for it has made 
the most independent section of the most indi- 
ridualistic people in the world profess the creed 
of Socialism without knowing what it is, with the 
odd result that the Independent Labor party, 
which introduced Socialism into the labor move- 
ment in the late eighties, is now engaged in the 
far more congenial task of combating state 
supremacy. 

However, this is all a digression to explain 
why I think the time is ripe for a new orientation 
90 



LABOR 

of labor thought on the lines of the Ruskin-Mor- 
ris tradition. 

I think the conception of "joy in work" needs 
careful analysis. I am sure that "interest" is n't 
the real thing we must aim at. The craftsman's 
joy in its pure form is rare, and the fruit of soli- 
tude and self-discipline. The English are not a 
race of artists. They are a race of practical, 
cheerful, sociable, industrious people with a high 
general average of abihty. Such people do not 
aspire to joy; what they want is to get reason- 
able satisfaction out of their daily work, and the 
social atmosphere in which they work is perhaps 
the chief natm-al source of that satisfaction. 
That is why I believe that all these expedients of 
shop committees, etc., do really go far to touch 
the root of the matter. 

There is another point, which I think is very 
important, and that is better arrangements re- 
garding the choice of employment. I believe 
that if, without any other changes at all, you 
could simply put all misplaced square pegs into 
square holes and vice versa, you would do an 
enormous amount to increase "satisfaction." 
91 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

This is a problem of keeping the working-class 
child at school long enough to be able to discover 
its special bent, and then providing skilled voca- 
tional guidance. A lot of work has been done on 
these lines by Thorndike, Bloomfield, and others 
in the United States, and we could do vastly more 
here. 

I think monotony should be met by regular ar- 
rangements for varying the job. There is a vast 
amount of experiment to be done on these lines. 
I expect you would find that the East-Enders 
who go hopping in Kent work all the better for 
it afterward. 

Leisure, of course, is being dealt with by the 
Workers' Educational Association, but I think 
we are only at the beginning of the communal 
provision of leisure and of real education for the 
adult citizen. This is one of the main functions 
of a university in a modem community, and its 
buildings ought to be systematically used for 
such purposes in vacation time. In fact, the ed- 
ucational plant, like the factory plant, ought 
never to be idle. 

This brings me to the poet and the artist. I 
have thought a good deal about their absence, be- 
92 



LABOR 

cause I have the example of Athens constantly 
in my mind. I think the main reasons are two: 

(1) That the modern world is too noisy and 
confused. We need absolutely to cultivate quiet. 
The telephone, for instance, is a devil's invention 
for heaving up delicate growths of thought by 
the roots. Most of our possible modern poets 
are journalists; that is, they never keep their 
poetry in till it is mature. This is specially true 
in the United States, which is a land overflowing 
with imagination and creative feeling, which 
hardly ever materializes in endming literary 
forms. 

(2) We lose a huge amount of our artistic and 
poetic material by our neglect of education in 
adolescence. The reasons why modern town 
life has not produced its Robert Burns is that the 
modern industrial system crushes men's spirit in 
adolescence and drives them to drink or worse, 
from which they emerge, if at all, incapable of the 
biggest work. 

I don't think we can ever hope to reform our 

social system without the artist's help, because 

only the artists can give our industrial workers a 

standard. Democracy in industry is all very 

,93 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

well up to a point, but masons and bricklayers 
are no more qualified to design a house than 
navvies are to decide on how a bridge is to be 
built. The bridge will tumble and the house will 
be ugly. This is the fallacy of the arts and 
crafts movement, which seems to assume that 
hard work, creative energy, and joy can produce 
beauty. But beauty has laws as sure as the laws 
of dynamics, and only a combination of natural 
endowment and hard thinking can discover them. 
The artist is before all things a scholar. To be a 
painter or an architect is to be at school and to 
have a school, as the Italians knew. But schol- 
ars are rare. Let us find those we have, and 
honor them and listen to them ; but do not let us 
flatter the workman by telling him he is equally 
competent to make their decisions, or that he can 
experience the same creative and reflective joy. 



04 



CHAPTER III 

WOMEN 
EMANCIPATION 

To-day women are facing the same hard 
fight for political recognition and industrial 
status that men faced one hundred years ago. 
They are taxed without being represented; they 
are worked without being properly paid. No 
phrase sums up the measure of their desires, for 
the desire to be free is larger than any policy, and 
creates its program in action. And with each 
gain the desire grows greater and more definite, 
and extends the program commensurate with its 
own sense of life. At no moment and at no 
point can it be codified, because it is under way. 
And this desire, propelling the woman's move- 
ment, is only one projection of a deep and po- 
tent instinct that is operating through men and 
women, through nations and classes. Already it 
has set Em-ope on fire. It may yet sweep the 
world. This impulse of creative force has 
96 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

welled up from the depths of life and gone out in 
many directions. As nationality, it has stirred 
France and Poland and Croatia. It has seethed 
through the colonies and turned the empire into 
the British Commonwealth. It has touched the 
labor movement into a revolutionaiy force. I 
saw the drive at Ypres. I circled Verdun and 
heard those guns. I have seen three hundred 
thousand men massed in a small area, and the 
regiments of relief swinging up the dusty road. 
But I hear other marching feet than those, and 
I know that this war is a little thing compared 
with what the silent miUions are soon to be doing 
to this old earth. The hammers of their recon- 
struction will make louder thunder than any of 
Picardy. The world is struggling to set itself 
free, and there has been no such stirring in a 
century. This movement toward freedom may 
be shackled and turned to base uses, like the 
forces liberated by the French Revolution; but 
the vigor and contagion of the movement are as 
yet beyond the control of any authority, and may 
achieve a great reconstruction before they die 
away. 

This creative impulse the women of to-day 
96 



WOMEN 

share with the miners of South Wales and the 
poets and peasants of Ireland. The "woman 
question" has been segregated as if it were a 
unique and unrelated problem which could be 
handled in a water-tight compartment. The 
purpose of the woman's movement, both trade- 
union and suffrage, is to integrate the "woman 
question" with the general movement toward 
democratic control. The charge has been made 
that women lack the capacity for organization, 
that they do not possess the native and instinc- 
tive cohesion that finds expression in trade- 
unions. The answer of their leaders is that ab- 
sence of organization is a characteristic of un- 
skilled, ill-paid, and casual labor, whether that 
labor is male or female. Where women have 
been admitted to skilled trades, as in the cotton 
industry, they have formed powerful unions and 
kept step with the men. Failure to organize is 
not a failure of sex. It is a matter of training, 
opportunity, and wages. As fast as skilled 
trades are thrown open, as fast as men's trade- 
unions unbolt the door, as fast as a living wage 
is paid, women respond with the same qualities 
of cohesion, the same faculty of organization, the 
97 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

same understanding of the principle of demo- 
cratic control, that men have revealed. 

But to be granted this chance to display capac- 
ity for self-govermnent in industry the vote is 
necessary. The vote is necessary because wages 
tend to slide down when the worker is impotent 
politically. The woman worker is unable to 
bring pressure on employers and the Govern- 
ment to enforce her demands. As an instance, 
the leaders point to the underpayment which has 
been given for over two years to many thousands 
of women in government-controlled establish- 
ments. Even in a period of high wages, women 
workers in large numbers have been existing on 
a weekly return of three or four dollars. A liv- 
ing wage is five dollars a week, and even that is 
severely low at the present prices. Granting the 
difference in cost of living between America and 
England, which is ceasing to be a wide differ- 
ence, the recent decision of Massachusetts for a 
minimum wage of $8.50 a week for the woman 
gives a better standard of living than the British 
Government minimum of a pound a week. To 
obtain such a minimum in the sweated industries 



WOMEN 

the women say they require the vote as a method 
of bringing pressure on the Government. 

But the}^ also say they must have the vote in 
order to win the full cooperation of the men's 
trade-unions. Actually, male labor will make a 
serious blunder if it excludes women from mem- 
bership in trade-unions, because, in place of an 
ally, it will have an unwilling enemy who will 
inevitably beat down the wage-scale. But to 
make the men see the desirability of including 
women in the fight for the high standard of liv- 
ing, the women must come with political power 
in their hands. Without the vote, the men re- 
gard them as a multitude of claimants, doubling 
the cost of organization, doubling the number of 
workers, without contributing to the man's 
strength. As a matter of fact, it is to the in- 
terest of the male trade-unions to welcome 
women workers even if they remain unenfran- 
chised. It is to their interest because, if women 
remain as a helot class, underpaid, unorganized, 
they will be used to scab the labor market. The 
men's trade-imions will be swamped by this new 
labor supply, unprotected and competing for 
99 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

jobs. To save reconstruction from such mis- 
takes, the women wish the vote so that they will 
be permitted to join male labor in the common 
fight. The reconstruction which is under way, 
much of it the blind operation of natural forces, 
some of it the careful progi'am of industrial 
thinkers, will be incomplete if women are omitted 
from the trade-unions' councils and the par- 
liamentary committees. 

Great Britain and Germany were the two 
nations of the modern world where the male mind 
was in full control of the channels of influence 
before the war. That woman's fields of activity 
were church, children, and kitchen was believed 
in England as in Prussia. The average man 
thought woman a slightly inferior creature, polit- 
ically incompetent, industrially incapable, men- 
tally ill endowed. Unconsciously, he has wished 
to keep her in the ranks of an unrepresented, 
exploited, and casual-labor class. It has re- 
quired an immense force of concentrated will, 
a wide-spread organization, and a constantly 
exerted pressure of what ^Ir. Lloyd-George calls 
"strident nagging" for woman to win the power- 
ful, but now veiy delicately balanced, position 
100 



WOMEN 

which she holds in the industrial world. She is 
seeking to win status. Status, or "standing," is 
that position which a person or a class holds 
because it is able to enforce its claims by political 
and economic power. Influence, whether silent, 
unconscious, or indirect, is non-existent except as 
the person or class possesses a measure of demo- 
cratic control over the conditions of life. 

This fight for recognition is in competent 
hands. Mary MacArthur, Maude Royden, Mrs. 
Fawcett, Mrs. Despard, Mrs. Pember Reeves, 
Mrs. Phihp Snowden, Clara Collet, Mrs. Sidney 
Webb, Mrs. Bosanquet, Miss Atkinson, Sylvia 
Pankhurst, Eleanor Rathbone, Clementina 
Black, and a dozen more leaders are women of 
intelligence, sanity, and of much personal charm. 
They are making careful studies of industrial 
and social conditions. They are "next-step" re- 
formers, basing their program of action on 
intensive investigation, analysis, and diagnosis. 

The woman's movement is fighting a low- 
wage scale. It is fighting bad-shop conditions 
and bad-home conditions. It is concerned with 
woman as an industrial worker and as a mother. 
It has a progi-am of reform that deals with 
101 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

woman in each of her two capacities. It is fight- 
ing to free the narrow, suppressed middle-class 
woman, to give her a good life of self-expression. 
It is fighting to enable high-powered, well- 
educated women to count in the life of the com- 
munity, to win for them fuller representation at 
the universities, a larger measure of influence in 
civil service and in government committees con- 
cerned with industrial conditions and community- 
welfare. Suffrage and trade-unions are two of 
the instruments with which to achieve status 
through organization. 

In a matter so vast and various as the woman's 
movement any positive statement of aim and 
direction is likely to be disputed. It would be 
impossible that the leaders should be committed 
to one single reform or set of measures. Each 
group apprehends a special need with intensity. 
What to get and how to get it are not seen single- 
eyed b}^ these groups with the calm concentration 
of Tammany Hall. The catalogue of their 
names shows the variety of their activities: 
Women's Labor League, the National Fed- 
eration of Women Workers, the Women's 
Trade-Union League, Women's Industrial 
102 



WOMEN 

Council, Women's Cooperative Guild, the Wom- 
en's Municipal Party, Catholic Women's League, 
and many more. And of suffrage societies there 
are the National Union of Women's Suffrage 
Societies, the Women's Social and Political 
Union, the Conservative and Unionist Women's 
Franchise Association, the Women's Liberal 
Federation (and Forward Suffrage Union), the 
Catholic Women's Suffrage Society, the Wom- 
en's Freedom League, the National Industrial 
and Professional Women's Suffrage Society, the 
New Union, the New Constitutional Society, 
the League of the Society of Friends, the 
People's Suffrage Federation, the Acti-esses' 
Franchise League, the Society of Women Grad- 
uates, the Women Writers' Suffrage League, 
the Younger Suffragists, the London Graduates' 
Union for Women's Suffrage, the Gymnastic 
Teachers' Suffrage Society, the Artists' League, 
the Suffrage Atelier, and many other organiza- 
tions. In what follows I give only a massing 
together of personal impressions from talks with 
many women interested in the forward move- 
ment. I think that every one would ratify some 
part of the program. Probably none would 
103 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

authorize the full program as embodying her own 
activity and desire. What I think the woman's 
movement of Great Britain is aiming at in their 
fight for status, which will be mainly waged 
through the instruments of trade-unions and 
suffrage, includes: 

(1) Economic independence. To understand 
this, we have got to clear our talk of popular 
phrases. One of the portmanteau phrases of our 
daj^ is that of "women going into industry." 
Women always were in industry till recently. 
Idle and unoccupied women were the exception 
in the older England. The Victorian Age in 
terms of human welfare was in this respect a 
reactionary age. The old-time industry of 
women was of course home industry. When 
most of the productive employments were lifted 
out of the home, women remained in the home, 
throwing a dead-weight on the productivity 
of the nation that it never before had to 
carry. The woman had always been a pro- 
ducer of clothing and food, and had shared 
the burden of requirements demanded by the 
household. Suddenly the man was left stand- 
ing alone, with the weight of a wife and chil- 
104 



WOMEN 

dren, sister and aunt, on his single powers of 
production. That very recent institution, the 
man-supported family, is a failure. It is a fail- 
ure because the individual man alone camiot buy 
the food, the lodging, and the clothing which 
make the physical basis of a good life. Slum- 
dwelling, under-nourishment, and disease are the 
proof that the man has failed to carry the burden 
of several human beings on his single pair of 
shoulders. The immense numbers of unmarried 
men (over three million), the restriction of the 
birth-rate, are further proofs of the breakdown 
of that modern and bad institution, the man- 
supported family. The present well-being of 
hundreds of thousands of working-men's homes is 
due to the fact that one and two and even three 
women are now wage-earners who before "helped 
around the house." It is not alone that the wage 
to the individual man has gone up for perhaps 
one third of the working population; it is that 
multitudes of women are earning money to-day 
who before were unemployed. I found in the 
Du Cros factory, for instance, that the majority 
of the women were the wives and relatives of the 
men workers who had gone to war. In the old 
105 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

days no one said, "A woman's proper place is the 
home," meaning by the home a retreat stripped of 
productive industry. The home meant a place 
of manufacture, where the woman shared with the 
man the burden of production. 

The problem of the future is this : now that her 
work is at a geographical distance from her home, 
has she the vitality to carry on her activity at two 
widety separated points? It was simple to turn 
from the milking in the shed to the baby in the 
kitchen ; but it is an unsolved problem how to rear 
a family in a side street and tend a lathe in the 
Woolwich Arsenal. War work for women has 
sharpened this problem. It is still an open ques- 
tion whether the excellent wage made by the 
young mother has been a sufficient offset to the 
fact of her absence from home. I have had testi- 
mony that the children under five years of age, 
left in the hands of relatives or friends, are better 
cared for because of the increased family budget. 
I have also had testimony that the actual care of 
the young child is not as good as when the mother 
is at home. With overtime and war strain, all 
former investigations would go to show that the 
106 



J 



WOMEN 

pressure of the last two and a half years on the 
organism of the woman will prove a permanent 
damage to the future of the race. The housing 
where large numbers have been shoveled together 
far from home is admittedly bad. The severe 
train journeys and the lack of moral oversight for 
the younger women are also admittedly bad. 
There is an immense amount of spade work to be 
done before we know even the factors in the 
woman question. We must study the full curve 
of' the woman's life, her adolescence, the changing 
curve of wifehood and motherhood, the nervous 
reactions in relation to function. We have been 
generalizing on the "nature of woman" when we 
have only the slightest psychological basis. It is 
impossible to formulate a policy or even a pro- 
gram before we have a multitude of recorded 
observations. In place of these we are treated 
to large and noisy claims and vehement denials. 
Women en masse have done their best by going 
ahead and acting; but social students have not 
done their best, because they have joined the 
movement and swelled the volume of voices 
instead of extracting the data. 
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To return to the list of aims in the woman's 
movement. I think that women beheve that 
better status will be obtained by 

(2) Increased sociabihty. It is not alone for 
the economic reason that woman enters the indus- 
trial world in increasing numbers and, as in this 
war, joyfully exchanges the home and domestic 
service for the life of the factory. Industry is 
sociable. Its organization, the various contacts of 
relationship, answer a craving in her nature as in 
the man's. Life has become an increasingly 
friendly thing down the ages, and the lonely 
sei-vant or housewife misses a fulfilment which 
even the underpaid shop girl finds. That the 
shop girl fails of values which the working-man's 
wife possesses is equally true. It is for the 
future to include both sets of values in the one 
life. In our overstress of economic determinism 
we are apt to forget that people do things because 
they wish to, as well as because they have to. So 
in all the maladjustments of women in industry 
we must remember that they are enjoying the 
conditions that surround the new work — ^the asso- 
ciations, the sociability — better than they enjoyed 
the isolated, unproductive home. To overstate 
108 



WOMEN 

the injustice and suffering of the industrial 
situation shows a lack of perspective on human 
history. Comfort and well-being, the margin of 
leisure, the elements of happiness, are gi*eater for 
the mass people than at any other period. A 
sullenness and despair have gone from the earth. 
The curse is being removed. Women are 
akeady sharing in this betterment, and they have 
recently elected the industrial world as a field of 
activity not because the factory process or the 
department-store detail offers in itself a worthier 
work than the care of children, but in part 
because the conditions sm^rounding the industrial 
world are freer and friendlier than the household 
conditions. There is an atmosphere of change 
and growth and sociability in paid work, and a 
freedom of hours when the work is done. There 
is probably small answer to many needs of 
woman's nature in clerical routine or mechanical 
process work in factory, office, and store. It is 
doubtless as sorry a thwarting of full self-ex- 
pression for her as it is for the man. But she 
finds a partial answer to her needs, a partial ex- 
pression, in the act of going out to a work of 
definitely assigned hours, of money payment, of 
109 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

set periods of freedom and recreation, of associa- 
tion with a group of fellow-workers, and the 
wider opportunity for social intercourse on self- 
respecting terms with men. 

And so we come to what I beheve is implicit 
in the movement toward industrial work for 
women. I am sure that one reason why they do 
not care to remain half occupied in their own 
homes, and why the best of them scorn domestic 
service, is that they wish : 

(3) A freedom of choice in selecting the mate 
— a freedom which was imperfectly granted to 
the woman in the restricted domestic area where 
she formerly passed her life. She has rejected 
the old policy of passive waiting while she played 
the role of dutiful daughter and older sister, cul- 
minating in the grayness of unselected "old 
maid," the aunt and nurse of other people's chil- 
dren. To obtain this freedom of choice she has 
stepped out into the wider arena of the industrial 
world. Between the ages of eighteen and 
twenty-five she is often not a determined worker 
in this field. She puts her spending money into 
attractive clothes and "a good time" as an in- 
vestment in aiding her to select a mate. 
110 



WOMEN 

(4) An equality in the home. As a wage- 
earner she can decree the terms of her position 
in the household. She become:^ one of the two 
heads of the household, and ceases to be the un- 
paid housekeeper. 

(5) Love. The deepest craving of her nature 
is to be loved. The old-time home did not fully 
meet this need, because love is based on equahty, 
and she was not an equal. 

(6) Intellectual and spiritual recognition. 
She wishes her mentality, the qualities of her be- 
ing, to be understood by the man she loves and 
to be used in the life of the community. She has 
capacities for municipal housekeeping, for wel- 
fare legislation, for civil service, which will en- 
rich the state. 

(7) A conmiunity motherhood. A majority 
of women will find self-expression in the home, 
but there will always be large numbers who will 
turn to the outer world to express their mother- 
ing instinct. They will express it by nursing, 
school-teaching, reform movements, welfare 
work, and in the humanizing of industry. 

(8) Career impulse. Increasing numbers of 
women find the same fullness of life in certain 

111 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

forms of modern work that men find. They are 
developing directive capacity, accm-acy, a mas- 
tery over large groups of facts and a power of 
generalization. 

Finally, we come to the most fundamental of 
all the claims made by women. They wish: 

(9) Birth-control. The modern woman 
wishes a final voice in the decision as to the nmn- 
ber of her offspring. She refuses to place her- 
self at the disposal of the man, to be used as he 
sees fit. Many feminists will angrily deny that 
this is a tendency of the woman's movement. 
Probably no leader will state openly that this 
tendency exists among modern women. But the 
vital statistics of the various countries establish 
the fact, and Great Britain, apart from the low- 
est elements of the population, has for forty years 
revealed a falling birth-rate. One can exempt 
many persons and many groups from the im- 
plication that they have furthered this tendency, 
and still be well inside what the facts show in 
stating that a powerful portion of the woman's 
movement, while not openly advocating birth- 
control, have nevertheless practised it, and that 
the emancipation of women is proceeding to the 
112 



WOMEIS^ 

accompaniment of a falling birth-rate. The un- 
willingness here to state the belief on which one 
acts is probably the last relic of the shame of sex 
which English and Americans share in equal 
measure. 

The relationship of worker to master has 
passed through slavery, serfdom, and the wage- 
nexus up to free labor. The relationship of 
women and man has had no such sharp stages, 
marked by a time division. But woman has 
been, variously and sometimes in the single rela- 
tionship, the instrument of household service, the 
instrument of pleasure, and the instrument of 
race procreation. In none of these relationships, 
as houri, squaw, or mother in Israel, has she been 
the free agent. Her position has been assigned 
her by man. The code of ethics governing her 
conduct has been created by what man thinks 
about her, and what he decrees she ought to be 
and to produce. He has assigned the limits, the 
conditions, and the kind of her activity. As she 
steps out into freedom, and, in particular, strikes 
a balance between her function as worker and 
citizen and her function of motherhood, she pre- 
sents the community with this far-reaching prob- 
113 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

lem of birth-control. In what is one of the few 
great books of this century, "Why Men Fight," 
I read: 

Very large numbers of women, when they are suffi- 
ciently free to think for themselves, do not desire to 
have children, or at most desire one child in order not 
to miss the experience which a child brings. There 
are women who are intelligent and active-minded who 
resent the slavery to the body which is involved in hav- 
ing children. There are ambitious women, who desire 
a career which leaves no time for children. There are 
women who love pleasure and gaiety, and women who 
love the admiration of men ; such women will at least 
postpone child-bearing until their youth is past. All 
these classes of women are rapidly becoming more nu- 
merous, and it may be safely assumed that their num- 
bers will continue to increase for many years to come. 

It is too soon to judge with any confidence as to the 
effects of women's freedom upon private life and upon 
the life of the nation. But I think it is not too soon 
to see that it will be profoundly different from the 
effect expected by the pioneers of the women's move- 
ment. Men have invented, and women in the past have 
often accepted, a theory that women are the guardians 
of the race, that their life centers in motherhood, that 
all their instincts and desires are directed, consciously 
or unconsciously, to this end. Tolstoy's Natacha 
illustrates this theory: she is charming, gay, liable to 



WOMEN 

passion, until she is married; then she becomes merely 
a virtuous mother, without any mental life. This re- 
sult has Tolstoy's entire approval. It must be ad- 
mitted that it^is very desirable from the point of view 
of the nation, whatever we may think of it in rela- 
tion to private life. It must also be admitted that it 
is probably common among women who are physically 
vigorous and not highly civilized. But in countries like 
France and England it is becoming increasingly rare. 
More and more women find motherhood unsatisfying, 
not what their needs demand. And more and more 
there comes to be a conflict between their personal de- 
velopment and the future of the community. 

The diminution of numbers, in all likelihood, will rec- 
tify itself in time through the elimination of those char- 
acteristics which at present lead to a small birth-rate. 
Men and women who can still believe the Catholic faith 
will have a biological advantage; gradually a race 
will grow up which will be impervious to all the assaults 
of reason, and will believe imperturbably that limitation 
of families leads to hell-fire. Women who have mental 
interests, who care about art or literature or politics, 
who desire a career or who value their liberty, will 
gradually grow rarer, and be more and more replaced 
by a placid maternal type which has no interests out- 
side the home and no dislike of the burden of mother- 
hood. This result, which ages of masculine domination 
have vainly striven to achieve, is likely to be the final 
outcome of women's emancipation and of their attempt 
115 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

to enter upon a wider spliere than that to which the 
jealousy of men confined them in the past. 

On the other hand, in a recent talk which I 
had with Havelock Ellis he expressed hiipself as 
wholly in favor of the birth-control movement. 
He believes it will tend to do away with war and 
poverty. He spoke with approval of the pub- 
licity campaign carried on in America by Mrs. 
Sanger, and he showed me a copy of a little maga- 
zine of birth-control, issued in Cleveland, Ohio. 
In his latest book, "Essays in War-Time," he 
writes : 

It used to be thought that small families were im- 
moral. We now begin to see that it was the large fam- 
ilies of old which were immoral. Quality rather than 
quantity is the racial ideal now set before us. 

He speaks of the evil Russian factory conditions as 
"the natural and inevitable result of a high birth-rate 
in an era of expanding industrialism. Here is the 
goal of unrestricted reproduction, the same among men 
as among herrings. This is the ideal of those persons, 
whether they know it or not, who in their criminal rash- 
ness would dare to arrest that fall in the birth-rate 
which is now beginning to spread its beneficent influ- 
ence in every civilized land." 

He sees birth-control as a natural process, with 
116 



WOMEN 

laws that underlie the voluntary and deliberate 
factors. "To improve the environment is to 
check reproduction," so that birth-control be- 
comes part of the entire forward movement of 
the race. "Those who desire a high birth-rate 
are desiring, whether they know it or not, the in- 
crease of poverty, ignorance, and wretchedness." 
All this concerns the nation within itself. With 
the international aspect of birth-control, which is 
the heai-t of the problem, the next chapter deals. 
We are confronted here by the most significant 
tendency in modern civilization. As yet we are 
meeting it with silence or with rhetoric, with a 
Mosaic morality or a callous cynicism ; but of pa- 
tient study there is little. The modern woman 
has precipitated upon us many problems, — "dilu- 
tion" of labor, and union rules, and all the rest, 
— but no other problem so searching, so funda- 
mental, as that of birth-control. The correct so- 
lution will be determinative of the future of the 
race, the nation, and the world. 

Like every other living and growing thing, 
the woman's movement will continue to puzzle us, 
and we shall catch up with it only to find it has 
swung out far ahead and over a wider area. 
117 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

THE FEMINISTS OF THE WAR OFFICE AND 
ADMIRALTY 

The War Office and the Admiralty are prov- 
ing themselves in this war daring innovators of 
radicalism. They mil be ranked in the futm'e 
alongside of the syndicahsts and the state social- 
ists as initiators of a new social order. They have 
accepted the "new morality" of the most advanced 
school of Ellen Key, and have enacted it into 
legislation. What they have done is to concede 
the claims of "sex agitators" and grant an en- 
dowment for maternity to the women of Great 
Britain. They have not paused at orth(5dox 
motherhood, sanctioned by court and church, but 
in their impetuous feminism they have legitimized 
unions without the benefit of clergy, and are car- 
ing for uimiarried wives and mothers. They 
have made the advanced program of the woman's 
movement their own, and have swallowed whole 
the scouts, cavalry fringe, and lonely outposts 
of sex radicalism. The British people had 
largely confined the woman's question to a suf- 
frage and trade-union movement, a poHtical 
movement. They had fought shy of the sex im- 
118 



WOMEN 

plications (maternity endowment, unmarried 
motherhood) upon which certain advanced think- 
ers in Germany and the Scandinavian countries 
had long been insistent. But at one bold stroke 
the audacious pioneers of the army and navy have 
opened the full question, and brushed aside the 
reserve and timidity which Britons, like Ameri- 
cans, manifest in the presence of procreation. 
The result is a scheme as amazing as if Kitchener 
and Havelock Ellis had worked in genial col- 
laboration. Militarism in England has proved 
a powerful dynamic for democratic control. It 
has bettered the status of labor, and it has created 
the new British commonwealth of five self-gov- 
erning democracies. The longer it is on top, the 
more equality it generates among its conscripts. 
But nothing it has done is so subversive of the 
old order as this endowment of maternity. 
Into what fresh fields of liberalism the staff- 
officers and sea-lords will break during the 
coming months no observer will now dare 
predict. 

Eleanor Rathbone, the famous town councilor 
of Liverpool, says of these military and naval 
feminists : 

119 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

In the system of separation allowances they have 
been conducting what is, in effect, the greatest experi- 
ment that the world has ever seen in the State endow- 
ment of maternity. At the outbreak of the present 
war separation allowances were promised, first to the 
wives and children, and afterwards, in succession, to 
all other classes of dependents of both soldiers and 
sailors. The scale is sufficient at least to place the 
large majority of dependents of soldiers and sailors in 
as good or better a position financially than that which 
they occupied before the war. The separation allow- 
ance is the possession of the wife and not of the hus- 
band, and cannot be drawn by him even with her con- 
sent. Thus, the allowance has, in fact (whatever the 
intention of the Government may have been), two char- 
acteristics which we should expect to find in a sys- 
tem of State endowment of maternity, viz. : it is a 
statutory payment to a woman in respect of her func- 
tions as wife and mother, and it is proportionate in 
amount to the number of her children. 

What really matters is not that the greater part of 
the upper, middle, and upper working-classes restrict 
their families, but that the strata below them, includ- 
ing the whole slum population, practise no such re- 
striction. They multiply quite freely, and public 
health authorities combine with private benevolence to 
do just enough to keep the babies so born alive, but 
not enough to make them healthy. Hence, we are, as 
a nation, recruiting the national stock in increasing 
120 



WOMEN 

proportions from the lower and least desirable ele- 
ments in the population. The first advantage of sepa- 
ration allowances is, then, that it removes the tempta- 
tion to undue restriction of families from those far- 
seeing and cautious parents who now practise it, and 
that it gives to the 3'ounger members of large families 
a better chance of healthy maintenance than they have 
£ver had before. 

It will be interesting to see how these women will 
take it when the war is over and they are asked to 
go back to their old status of dependency. I confess 
to hoping that the seeds of *'divine discontent" will 
have been implanted in them too deeply to be eradi- 
cated, and that we feminists will then find our oppor- 
tunity. The economic soundness of the State endow- 
ment of maternity has always appealed to me, even 
more strongly, if possible than its humanitarian and 
eugenic advantages. Many people do not seem even to 
have grasped the elementary truth that the work of 
bearing and rearing the rising generation is the occu- 
pation of all occupations that is most absolutely essen- 
tial to the existence of the State. The women who are 
engaged in this occupation have to be maintained, and 
so have their children until they are of an age to keep 
themselves. The money that this costs has to come 
from somewhere. 

These separation allowances are the first seri- 
ous attempt made by the Government to deal 
121 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

with the question of population, the most funda- 
mental question which the nation faces. If half 
a million of the young men are killed or hope- 
lessly incapacitated by this war, the resources of 
the country are diminished beyond repair unless 
a method of replenishment is instituted. Our 
past method of allowing the slum population to 
multiply, and forcing our better-class workers to 
restrict their families, is national suicide. Eng- 
lish thought is almost silent on this question of 
whence the next generation is to come when the 
number of the fathers is lessened. There is a 
buzz of talk on tillage, cattle-raising, fertihty of 
soil, but of how to get the human product there is 
little said. Bertrand Russell says : 

It seems unquestionable that if our economic system 
and our moral standards remain unchanged, there will 
be, in the next two or three generations, a rapid change 
for the worse in tiie character of the population in 
all civilized countries, and an actual diminution of 
numbers in the most civilized. 

There is reason to fear in the future three bad re- 
sults: first, an absolute decline in the numbers of 
English, French, and Germans ; secondly, as a conse- 
quence of this decline, their subjugation by less civil- 
ized races and the extinction of their tradition ; thirdly, 
122 



WOMEN 

a revival of their numbers on a much lower plane of 
civilization, after generations of selection of those who 
have neither intelligence nor foresight. If this result 
is to be avoided, the present unfortunate selectiveness 
of the birth-rate must be somehow stopped. 

The problem is one which applies to the whole West- 
ern civilization. There is no difficulty in discovering a 
theoretical solution, but there is great difficulty in per- 
suading men to adopt a solution in practice, because 
the effects to be feared are not immediate, and the sub- 
ject is one upon which people are not in the habit of 
using their reason. If a rational solution is ever 
adopted, the cause will probably be international 
rivalry. It is obvious that if one state, say Germany, 
adopted a rational means of dealing with the matter, 
it would acquire an enoraious advantage over other 
states unless they did likewise. After the war it is pos- 
sible that population questions will attract more atten- 
tion than they did before, and it is likely that they will 
be studied from the point of view of international 
rivalry. This motive, unlike reason and humanity, is 
perhaps strong enough to overcome men's objections to 
a scientific treatment of the birth-rate. 

Havelock Ellis suggests the extension of birth- 
control to the lowest elements in the population, 
so that the ignorant and diseased and feeble- 
minded will not breed out of proportion to the 
123 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

rest of the community. But birth-control alone, 
even when generally applied inside a nation in- 
stead of being applied as now only to the intel- 
ligent and wholesome elements, does not meet the 
international situation, which is one where the 
militaristic and autocratic nations, like Germany, 
Russia, and Japan, go on multiplying, and so al- 
tering the balance of power. Two wars have re- 
vealed that a stable population, like the French, 
no matter what its national well-being and its 
courage, is not in itself powerful enough to resist 
the invasion of a mihtary nation superior in num- 
bers. A generally appHed birth-control does not 
meet the actual situation of an ever-expanding 
Slav race, with the yellow races in the near back- 
ground and the early future in world arrange- 
ments. We cannot rely on an eternal world 
peace to permit us to reduce the populations of 
the democracies. 

If England becomes a nation of a permanent, 
balanced, static civilization of forty milhon per- 
sons, that gives the future to prolific races, and 
the liberal democratic experiment is doomed. In 
America we are going this way blindly. Our 
old stock is practising birth restriction and is pass- 
124! 



WOMEN 

ing out of existence. We have hidden from our- 
selves the perils and ultimate disaster of this pro- 
cess by importing fresh hordes of vital peasants 
from southern and southeastern Europe ; but the 
process is working to the extinction of the old 
America, and it is substituting different races, of 
alien blood and belief. A control of our life is 
being exercised by other races, and in a few gen- 
erations we shall have an America as distinct 
from Puritan New England and the Cavaher 
South as Dublin is different from Manchester. 
Immigration is the easy and fatal solution for a 
lessening stock in America, but it is no answer 
for England. Englishmen will never let them- 
selves be di-owned out by tides of Sicilians, 
Slovaks, and Russian Jews. The future of Eng- 
land rests on whether its women are mothers, and 
whether those mothers and their children are well 
provided for. All other problems of reconstruc- 
tion are derivative as compared with the creation 
of life and the establishment of a healthy 
and numerous child population. Lowering the 
death-rate by good milk and sanitation and hous- 
ing and medical care is only a partial cure for a 
faUing birth-rate. And saying, "Let women 
125 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

work in the factories and professions and be 
mothers at the same time" does not meet the 
fact that the factory and the home are separate 
places. 

"More and better children" is obviously the 
only solution for a Western democracy in a world 
where neighboring nations are not under demo- 
cratic control. So we are forced back to some 
such answer as that of the feminist movement, 
led by the War Office and the Admiralty. Do 
not penalize by poverty the woman who gives 
sons and daughters to the state; endow mother- 
hood. Population is a community and state con- 
cern. A nationalized motherhood is of more im- 
portance than nationalized railways. The mili- 
tary authorities have blazed the way by a reck- 
less disregard of laissez-faire and conventional 
morality. They have laid down the principle of 
state guardianship for the profession of mother- 
hood. It now rests with the common sense of 
England — a conmion sense reinforced by the in- 
stinct of self-preservation — to refuse to permit 
the great experiment of the War Office and the 
Admiralty to die away. 



126 



WOMEN 



BOWING THEM OUT 



The women of England, having received the 
thanks of a grateful kingdom, are now about to 
be rushed to the door and kicked down-stairs. 
They will be considered unmannerly if they do 
not pick themselves up from the door-step and 
disappear unostentatiously into the night. The 
process of accelerating them into their place is 
already under way. The speaker's committee 
on the franchise has reported, with a careful 
evasion of woman suffrage. The British bar 
has just voted down the admission of "duly 
qualified women to the profession" by an over- 
whelming majority. The sober sense of the 
members came to voice in the orator who was 
able to speak for "a good many members of the 
bar serving with the colors. They had the first 
claim to say to what extent the old tradition 
which confined admission to the bar to the male 
sex should be maintained. To take such a de- 
cision in their absence would be unjust to them." 

The man at the front is being worked over- 
time in these days. He has to stand duty in wet 
trenches, and then the ghostly projection of him 
127 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

is yanked back to elderly gatherings in London 
to protest against alterations in the ancient way 
of doing things. 

So woman's fight for recognition reaches its 
third campaign. In the days before the war^ 
there was a dead-weight of opposition, made up 
of ignorance, distrust of change, and sex scorn. 
Then came the need of woman's help in five hun- 
dred processes of industry, in medicine, and 
organization. If girls made shells, steered de- 
livery-wagons, conducted hospitals, served on the 
police force, managed business, and adjusted in- 
dustrial disputes, there was little cogency in say- 
ing that women could not do man's work. As 
one of the women who helped to pull England 
through said : "Before the war women were only 
the mothers of men. Now they had risen to the 
dizzy heights of the makers of machine-guns." 
The tide was with them, and every wind that blew 
filled their sails. 

Now comes the third and bitterest phase of the 
long fight. "Thank you kindly, but it is time for 
you to go." Bad years are ahead for the women 
of England. But let no one worry unduly. 
They have come to stay, and they will obtain the 
128 



WOMEN 

vote. During the transition period, when the 
shell factories are becoming industrial plants, 
when the returning soldiers will have first call on 
the jobs, when the men's trade-unions are making 
up their minds whether women are their allies or 
their enemies, and when Parliament is deciding 
whether its ancient, solitary reign will be mo- 
lested by these energetic new-comers, the female 
semi-skilled workers will have a severe experi- 
ence. The unskilled workers will have the same 
sordid experience they have always had. This 
period of transition may extend through several 
years. Gradually the creation of new indus- 
tries, making use of the new automatic machinery 
introduced under war pressure, will again offer 
jobs to the demobilized women. Winning the 
suffrage, women will have the power to enforce 
their demands for proper payment, and as voters 
they will suddenly become welcome additions to 
the male trade-unions, and together they will con- 
tinue the fight for a high standard of living for 
both men and women. 

About eight hundred thousand women have 
recently entered industry, transport, commerce, 
government employment, and agriculture. Five 
129 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

hundred thousand of these are busy in munition- 
making. This increase came from five classes: 
first, more than one hundred thousand came from 
domestic servants ; second, from the ranks of out- 
door workers and small employers; third, from 
women remaining in industry after marriage and 
to a later age, and girls fresh from school ; fourth, 
married women, widows, former dependents, 
returning to employment; fifth, middle-class 
women, society women, entering industry and 
commerce. 

Many of these women will return to the home 
at the close of the war, but a large percentage 
have come to stay. All these have replaced the 
man in semi-skilled and unskilled work, one 
woman for one man. This is direct substitution. 
Indirect substitution is found when woman takes 
the place of an unskilled or a semi-skilled man 
who in turn takes the place of a fully skilled man. 
Group substitution is when a group of women 
takes the place of a smaller group of men, and 
substitution by rearrangement when women, plus 
automatic machinery, do work previously requir- 
ing skilled workers. The introduction of women 
130 



WOMEN 

by these methods of substitution is virtually gen- 
eral throughout the trades. 

In mechanical engineering, in "controlled" 
firms, the money wages received on piece-work 
are far above those earned by women before the 
war. Ten dollars a week is rather common, and 
instances of thirteen dollar a week day-rates are 
known. By a series of orders a minimum wage 
of a pound a week for forty-eight hours has 
gradually been established. 

In the cotton trade, boot-and-shoe industry, 
bleaching and dyeing, woolen and worsted, china 
and earthenware industries, and tailoring, wages 
have been much bettered during the war. 

The same care in substitution has not been 
made in agi'iculture, in biscuit and bread, nibber 
works, confectionery and sweets. The woman's 
wage here has tended to increase during the war, 
but probably not to equal the man's rate. 

Summing up, the substitution of women for 
men has increased the money wage for women. 
In trades with definite agreements the women's 
rates approximate the men's. Where there has 
been no agreement, the women's wage has been 
131 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

better than before the war, but is still far too low. 

Of women in women's work, in the fuse and 
powder trades, as the result of arbitration, a gain 
has been made. In electrical engineering and 
telephone work, except for certain cases, the rate 
has changed but little. Why has woman won a 
decided advance in mechanical engineering and 
not in electrical engineering? The answer is that 
she is organized in mechanical engineering. 
Skilled groups of women workers in the power- 
machine trade have won real advances. In sugar 
confectionery, tailoring, and shirt-making a fair 
advance has been made. But all three trades are 
closely related to war work. Where the woman's 
trade organization has been strong she has ob- 
tained a decided rise in wages, whether she has 
been doing women's work or substitution work 
in men's jobs. But the bulk of women's indus- 
tries have not kept step with the increased cost of 
living, nor has substitution for men necessarily 
obtained the man's full rate. Munition-workers 
have obtained a fair minimum promised them by 
the Government exactly in so far as their organ- 
izations have enforced the promise. 

It is clear, then, that it is possible at any time 
132 



WOMEN 

to obtain a decided advance in women's wages, in- 
cluding sweated industries. This advance will 
be obtained when, and not until when, the trade- 
union movement enforces it. The trade-union 
movement will probably not enforce it until 
women have the vote. 

For two and a half years women industrial 
workers as a class have had more money than 
ever before. What has been done with it? It 
has gone into milk for the children, meat for a 
few meals a week instead of once a week, heat in 
the rooms, a clean blouse for the little girl, a pic- 
ture-show for all the children. It has gone into 
war savings. It has purchased status, that most 
precious of all things. Money buys self-respect 
and a sense of well-being. For the first time in 
the life of many of these women they have not 
been obliged to go under-nourished, a little 
pinched, a little chilly, dressed in a garb that 
stamps them of the lower class. They have put 
off the faded shawl, the dreary blouse, the dis- 
colored straw hat, the boots with sagging heels, 
and the heavy-threaded stockings, thick at the 
ankles. Is it anything but good that some of 
them have rented a piano for the home, and now 
133 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

have a bit of fun and music in crowded rooms ? I 
have a friend who has oversight of some thou- 
sands of these workers. He told me of a girl 
who bought three suits of silk underwear at 
thirty-seven shillings a suit. It is nice to feel 
well-dressed from the skin out, when all the days 
of one's youth one has been in the miiform of the 
poor. 

But he told me another thing. When one of 
the workers died of consumption, he sold 223 
tickets at sixpence, a shilling, and half a crown 
each among the other workers for the widow and 
two children. Every week has its benefit 
for some family of the shop. Eveiy week, with 
an open hand, the workers pay out their money 
for concert or theatrical entertainment to make a 
fund for people in trouble. For hundreds of 
thousands of these women the years of war have 
brought the first free spending money they 
have ever known, and there is something appeal- 
ing, if we knew it, in the history of every shilling 
they have spent. 

The war has introduced grave dangers to the 
health of women by night work; overtime; hot 
atmospheric conditions such as occur in certain 
134 



WOMEN 

processes in woolen textile; severe muscular ac- 
tion, as in the lifting of heavy weights; and by- 
poisoning, as in some of the processes in shell- 
filling. In munition work there has been a nerv- 
ous strain connected with certain of the proc- 
esses and the dangers of fire and explosion. In 
addition, a few factories are in Zeppelin areas, 
and on a telephone warning all lights go out, and 
the women lie flat on the floor till the danger is 
past. When the word comes to them to rise, one 
or two in a department are found in a faint. 

To offset this, the Government has made the 
most determined effort in the history of any pub- 
he institution to enforce proper conditions of 
work, to fight against overtime, to establish clean- 
liness, sanitation, and nourishment. The wel- 
fare department, under the ministry of muni- 
tions, conducted by perhaps the best known so- 
cial worker in the Enghsh-speaking world, See- 
bohm Rowntree, has literally labored day and 
night to guard the girls and women of Great 
Britain. It has sought to preserve five hundred 
thousand women from results of war pressure 
which would have been disastrous. As a peace 
measure, welfare work is still an open question 
135 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

when conducted by private enterprise unless it 
is clearly an addition to a living wage and not a 
clever substitute for it. But as a government 
measure in a time of the severest crisis in the 
history of the world it deserves nothing but 
praise. 

Of the eight hundred thousand women who 
have transferred themselves into new work, how 
many are going to stay? No one knows. An 
organization to combine women in certain trades 
sent out recently a form of questions with the in- 
quiry, "Do you wish after the war to return to 
your former work or to stay in what you are do- 
ing now?" Of three thousand answers, twenty- 
five hundred replied that they wished to remain 
in the new work. That is, five sixths. On the 
other hand, an investigator who has made a study 
of social conditions among the Coventry workers 
tells me that the majority of the women say they 
will leave industry and take up home life after 
the war. Some of them are married women who 
are now making the family income while the hus- 
band is at the front. Others are upper-class 
women who are "filling in" from patriotic mo- 
tives for the duration of the war only. Others 
136 



WOMEN 

are girls with their "boys" at the front. The 
young man will return from the war "fed up" 
with the life of a "stag camp," keenly desirous 
of a home and a family. Each locality, then, has 
to be studied, for each offers its own set of con- 
ditions. But out of the melee we can see several 
hundred thousand women, new-comers in the 
trades of men, remaining. We must remember 
that the old work no longer is open to them to 
the same extent as in the days before the war. 
It is probable that some of the luxury trades have 
ceased forever. Cormnon sense, taxation, and 
the organized state will probably not permit the 
old-time expenditure on millinery, ball-dresses, 
and fancy sweets. Domestic sen^ice will not 
again suck up one milhon and three quarters 
women. The house that kept twenty-four serv- 
ants will keep ten, the family that had three will 
"do" with one. There is no direction for women 
to go but forward. 

Will there be work for them ? No one knows. 
Coventry has already received orders for 1918, 
and it is probable that industry there will run on 
at full capacity for a year or two at least after 
the war. In Sheffield the employers plan a 
137 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

swift conversion to the trades of peace. The 
great steel firms anticipate an undiminished de- 
mand for their produce. What made shells will 
be turned into railway supplies, for instance. 
Already they have orders that guarantee the im- 
mediate future — orders from Great Britain and 
Russia. They state that they will continue the 
women at work and will at the same time fit in 
the men. But such a report is unusual. 

There are men's trade-unions, as in the in- 
stance of the transport-workers, who stood by the 
job until the women received the same rate of 
pay that they possessed. One or two other 
men's unions have promised to make the same 
fight after the war for the women. But these 
instances of rendering the work of reconstruction 
easy are unique, and the women must probably 
make their own fight, unaided by the Govern- 
ment, by the men's trade-unions, and by the em- 
ployers. Unorganized and unenfranchised, they 
will be the center of unrest and suffering, a run- 
ning sore in industry, imperiling the standard of 
living established by the men's organizations, 
scabbing wages, and weakening the trade-union 
movement. With votes and wide-spread unions, 
138 



WOMEN 

they would become a vital element in the emanci- 
pation. 

What women face at the end of the war is the 
chaos into which they fell at the beginning of the 
war, when over a million and a half of em- 
ployed women were thrown out of work or placed 
on short time. With the coming of peace the 
semi-skilled women will be demobilized from the 
munitions factories and dumped upon the labor 
market. At the same time two and a half mil- 
lion men will leave war trades and flood the labor 
market. And the army will be demobilized. 
Much of the new machinery created for war needs 
will be available for the industries of peace; but 
the period of transition will be long, because the 
plant must be adjusted to the new requirements, 
markets for the product developed, and capital 
found. It may be two years, it may be five 
years, before what has been a shell factory be- 
comes an engineering plant, turning out an equal 
volume of production. During the time in which 
the business is finding itself the women workers 
are going to be the last class in the labor market 
to be considered. The old skilled, semi-skilled, 
and unskilled workers returning from the army, 
139 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

the men munition-workers, the partly wounded 
soldiers, will have prior consideration. They 
will be safeguarded by a carefully wrought 
scheme of demobilization, by a properly adjusted 
unemployment insurance, by a pension system. 
It rests with the women, by agitation and pres- 
sure, to establish for themselves a standard of 
living, and to hold fast to the undoubted immense 
gains they have made during the war. 

The task is probably not one primarily of 
creating work. The rebuilding of Belgium and 
northern France, the deterioration of plant in 
Great Britain, the closer industrial association of 
England with her colonies, the needs of Russia 
— all these give promise of a stimulated market 
for British products. The task is one of organ- 
ization, devising a machinery for connecting the 
worker with the job, safeguarding unemploy- 
ment, and maintaining the standard of living. 
The new minister of labor is arranging to breathe 
life into the sleepy institution of labor exchanges, 
and to add eight hundred to the number. The 
Government has offered the extension of com- 
pulsory unemployment insurance. This meets 
only the needs of some of the war workers and 
140 



WOMEN 

meets those needs only in part. Seven shillings 
a week amounts to poor relief, and does not re- 
construct the industrial situation of the total 
group. 

Certain of the women leaders have suggested 
a wide-spread unemployment insurance which 
shall preserve the standard of living; an analysis 
of the market as to where workers will be re- 
quired, with the distribution of such informa- 
tion through trade-unions and employment ex- 
changes ; and a supply of blank forms to be filled 
up by the workers desiring future employment; 
due notice of dismissal to be given by "con- 
trolled" establishments, and return railway fares 
to be paid to those workers who have come from 
a distance; and the use of government factories 
for a continuing national work. Further, they 
have suggested a system of training in new trades 
for women displaced from work. Such is the im- 
mediate program. 

But back of it lies a deeper need. The sug- 
gestion has been made for a minimum wage. 
This could well be made part of the general pol- 
icy, which was already beginning to be formu- 
lated before the war for a minimum wage in agri- 
141 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

culture and the underpaid men's trades. Ex- 
perts had agreed before the war that the primary 
condition to be met was that, with the least pos- 
sible delay, all workers of normal ability should 
receive as an absolute minimum a reasonable liv- 
ing wage. By this is meant a wage which will 
enable an adult man to maintain a family of nor- 
mal size in a state of physical efficiency, and 
which will allow a margin for recreation. With 
the prices of July, 1914, this was twenty-seven 
shillings a week, allowing five shillings for rent. 
With present prices this has become thirty-six 
shillings. But to establish a minimum of thirty- 
six shillings a week at one stroke is impracticable ; 
so the present demand is for a minimvmi of thirty 
shilHngs. The minimum suggested for a woman 
was sixteen shillings before the war. It is now a 
pound a week (the rate gradually established by 
the Government in munition factories). Some 
of the experts ruled out the suggestion that a 
woman should be paid as a minimum enough to 
maintain a family. They argued that minimum 
wages should be arranged with a view to normal 
conditions, and though there are many excep- 
tions, the normal condition is for man to main- 
142 



I 



WOMEN 

tain a family and for a woman not to do so. 
This contention will of course be disputed by 
many feminists on the showing of the facts. But 
what is clear in the matter is that there is a rapidly 
increasing tendency toward a minimum wage, 
and that a minimum-wage act must include 
women. 

Other measures of reconstruction are being 
pressed by the leaders of working-women. In- 
vestigation is needed as to what employments 
are hurtful to a woman's organism. Reform 
of the factory laws is included in the changes 
that are now seen to be required. The eight- 
hour day must be enforced. President Wilson 
by his decision in the railway strike has enforced 
a principle to which the trade-unions all over the 
world must respond. Women officials are re- 
quired in greatly increased numbers to safeguard 
the position of women in industry. Not only 
must the number of women factory inspectors be 
increased, but it may prove to be necessary that 
members of the new profession of welfare work- 
ers in factories shall be appointed by the state 
rather than paid for by the employer, and the new 
labor ministry must have among its under-secre- 
143 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

taries a representation of women. The trade- 
unions must grant admission to women in return 
for monetary contributions, and the women must 
have a measure of control of the machinery of the 
union. The children who by means of a special 
certificate have leaked into industry must be re- 
turned to school. This at one sweep would re- 
lieve the labor market of one hundred and eighty 
thousand persons in industry and agriculture. 
It is probable that all these reforms are dependent 
on the winning of the suffrage. 

DISORGANIZATION 

The chaos out of which woman's work is 
slowly emerging will be revealed by a modern 
instance better than by tons of generalization. 
I have asked a young woman of excellent middle- 
class family, now financially pinched, to make a 
chart of her recent life-history. Better than any 
"wail" it shows the cul-de-sac of the old "genteel" 
occupations. It explains why she has turned to 
clerical work in the War Office, paying a salary 
of twenty-seven shillings a week. It shows why 
she will not return to the old job after the war. 
Like a few hundred thousand other women, she 
144 



WOMEN 

has entered organized life determined to stay. 
Employers, the state, and trade-unions must 
reckon with her. Her chapter of dreary episode 
is followed by a chapter in sharp contrast on the 
policewomen, who have inserted organization 
into a muddled community. The two chapters 
together are the concrete demonstration of the 
economic and social disturbance which has pre- 
cipitated women into the central activities of the 
community. 

My friend's position was that of "lady help," 
the kind of work which is "woman's work," and 
has the approval of anti-feminists and other re- 
actionaiy theorists. I have preserved her ar- 
rangement and phrasing. 



145 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

COMPANION HELP IN BOARDING-HOUSE AT 
ST. LEONARDS 

£20 ($100) salary a year. 
1 shilling, weekly laundry. 
Tips, gloves, flowers, or sweets. 

6:30 A.M. Rise. 

7:00 Dust dining-room and drawing-room, water and wash 

all plants, arrange flower-vases and put out all des- 
sert, make servants' and own bed, tidy own bedroom. 

9:00 Pour out all coffee and tea and cocoa, help with serv- 

ing breakfast. 

10:00 Make all single beds, help maid with double ones 

(about twenty-two bedrooms, two houses adjoining). 
Dust all bedrooms, superintend maid with all up- 
stairs work and turning out of rooms, give out all 
linen, see to sorting same. 

12:00 M. Mend all torn linen, interview guests for rooms. 

1:00 P.M. Help serve lunch, give out and check all beer and 
stout sold. 

2:00 till 4:00. Free to go out or rest. 

4:00 Cut up all cakes for tea, and hand round tea with 

maid in drawing-room. 

5:30 Mending. 

6:30 Time allowed myself to change for dinner. 

7:00 Serve soup, vegetables, and sweets. 

8:00 Entertain in drawing-room, singing and accompanying 

songs, arrange card-tables, talk to gentlemen in 
smoking-room. 

11:00 Put out all lights in both houses, then allowed to go 

to bed. 

146 



WOMEN 



LADY HELP AT RECTORY, WITH SIX IN FAMILY 
AND NO SERVANT 

£18 ($90) salary a year. 
1 shiUing, laundry weekly. 

6:00 A.M. Rise. 

6:30 Clean big kitchen range, clean two sitting-room grates, 

sweep two big rooms, and dust. 

9:00 Cook breakfast (hot), lay cloth, serve, clear away. 

10:00 Make beds with lady, empty toilets, sweep and dust 

four bedrooms. 

11:00 Cook and prepare hot lunch, wash all vegetables, just 

dug out of garden, clean windows inside which 
needed doing, clean silver and brass in sitting-rooms, 
clean door-step every other day. 

12:00 Bi. Tidy up kitchen before lunch, wash over kitchen with 
mop, also scullery (stone floors), wash hearth. 

12:30 P.M. Lay lunch and serve. 

1 :30 Clear lunch away and wash up, lady helping to dry up. 

2:15 Time allowed to tidy up and have rest. 

3:45 Get tea for four, clear away, and wash up. 

6:00 Bathe and put little boy to bed, get supper for same 

and his little brother. 

7:00 Prepare hot supper for four. 

8 :00 Serve supper, clear away, and wash up. 

9:00 Put hot bottles in four bedrooms. 

9:30 Finished work; coidd go to bed if I liked. 



147 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 



LADY HELP AT HOUSE, WHERE NO SERVANT IS KEPT 

Five in family, parents, one little girl of five, twins ten weeks old, 

in delicate health. 

£12 ($60) salary a year. 

6:30 A.M. Rise. 

7:00 Make and take up early tea to bedroom, dress little 

girl. 

8:30 Sweep dining-room, dust, and lay cloth. 

9:00 Look after twins through breakfast, have mine as best 

could, also attend little girl. 

10:00 Help both t^vins get ready, make beds, dust and sweep 

four bedrooms, empty toilets, tidy bathroom, take all 
three children out, babies in pram (perambulator). 

12:30 P.M. Bring children home, make bottles, lay luncheon on 
cloth. 

1 :00 Look after three children at lunch. 

3:00 Take three children out, have entire charge of three. 

4KK) Get tea, make bottles, take children out for short time, 

do shopping. 

6:00 Put babies and little girl to bed, give them bottles. 

7:00 Get supper and lay cloth, clear away and wash up, 

listen to babies the rest of the evening, make their 
bottles. 

11:00 Could go to bed. Had one twin in my room all night, 

had to attend to it and make bottles every two hours 
through the night; baby slept very badly. 



148 



WOMEN 

LADY HELP AT PRIVATE HOUSE AT BLACKHEATH, 

WITH PARENTS AND TWO CHILDREN, 

NO SERVANTS 

£20 ($100) salary a year. 

6:00 A.M. Rise. 

6:30 Take up early morning tea, sweep dining-room and 

hall, clean kitchen, light fire, clean grate, cook hot 
breakfast, light copper on Mondays, and fill same. 

8:30 Serve breakfast. 

9:30 Clear breakfast and wash up. 

10:00 Empty toilets, dust stairs and landing and bath-room, 

sweep and dust four bedrooms, dust drawing-room. 

11:00 Take children out to do shopping. 

12:00 M. Prepare and cook hot lunch, make puddings for hot 
supper. 

1:00 P.M. Serve lunch, lay cloth, clear away, wash up, and make 
tea. 

3:00 Time allowed to tidy and wash myself. 

3:45 Get tea, clear away and wash up, ironing to be done. 

6:00 Take children for walk, get their supper. 

7:30 Cook supper, lay cloth, and wash up. 

9:00 Work finished, go to bed. 



149 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 



LADY HELP AT HOTEL IN LONDON 



£36 ($130) salary a year. 
1 shilling, laundry weekly. 



7:00 A.M. Rise. 



7:30 Dust dining-room, drawing-room and hall, see to 

flower-vases, help maid carry up all breakfasts from 
basement to dining-room, varying in number, clear in 
between, and keep tables quite tidy and freshly laid. 

10:30 Go up-stairs with maid, make all beds by myself, fill 

jugs, tidy bathroom, dust and sweep ten bedrooms. 

12:20 P.M. Tidy for lunch, help maid lay luncheon cloth, carry up 
some trays. 

1:00 P.M. Wait on guests at lunch. 

2:00 Clear away lunch and wash silver, knives, and glass. 

3:00 Mend torn linen, answer front door-bell, shopping. 

4:00 Lay and get tea, usually two meals of tea at different 

times, then mend linen until six o'clock. 

6:30 Help maid lay dinner-cloth. 

7:00 Bring each separate course from kitchen up-stairs, wait 

on guests in dining-room. 

8:00 "Wash up silver, knives, and glass. 

8:45 Finished; go home. 



150 



WOMEN 



LADY HELP AT LADIES' HOSTEL FOR WAR WORKERS, 
DAILY COOK KEPT 



£18 ($90) salary a year. 



6:00 A.M. Rise. 



6:30 Fill big tea oven, make ready morning tea, lay break- 

fast for eighteen, cut up four plates of bread and 
butter. 

7:30 First breakfast for seven. 

8:30 Rest, have breakfast, serve and wait on every one, 

hand cups round. 

9:30 Empty all toilets, fill all jugs in fifteen bedrooms, 

cubicles mostly, sweep and dust bedrooms, sweep 
stairs (four flights). 

12.00 M. Lay luncheon-cloths. 

1:00 P.M. Serve luncheon and wait on twenty people. 

2:00 Clear away luncheon. 

3:00 Wash up silver, glass, and knives. 

3:20 Time allowed for rest and to tidy myself. 

4:00 Get tea for seven people. 

5:30 Wash up tea-things. 

6:00 Lay cloth for twenty for evening meal; meal lasts till 

9 P.M. 

9:00 Wash up. 

10:00 Go to bed. 



151 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 



LADY WAITRESS AT ARMY PAY OFFICERS' MESS 

Ten shillings salary a week. Had to pay four shillings a week for 
bedroom out of it; only to work from Monday to Friday. 



9:00 A.M. Help the cook prepare all puddings, rub bread-crumbs, 
chop suet, etc., peel all vegetables, three or four dif- 
ferent sorts. 

11:30 Put up several big hospital tables, arrange all chairs, 

etc., carry down everything for cloth from kitchen 
down a yard, with no protection from rain or snow, 
to a hall let for the purpose. 

1 :00 P.M. Carry down all courses for hot lunch, clear away every- 
thing, back again to kitchen, wait on officers at lunch. 

3:00 Sweep hall and cloak-room, remove everything from 

hall, take down tables, sweep kitchen and passage, 
help cook with all the washing up. 

6:00 Usually finished; pay breaks. 



152 



WOMEN 



TEMPORARY HELP AT A LODGING-HOUSE AT 
BRIGHTON, WHERE MAID IS KEPT 

Seven shillings sixpence ($1.80) weekly and tips. 

6:30 A.M. Rise. 

7:00 Take up early tea for five people, hot water to carry 

up for seven or eight, sweep two big sitting-rooms, 
and dust, lay breakfast-cloths in both rooms (differ- 
ent floors). 

9:00 Take up breakfast for seven people in one room and 

ten in the other. Get breakfast for staff and take in. 

10:00 Clear away breakfasts, make beds with lady, empty all 

toilets, sweep and dust seven or eight bedrooms. 

12:15 P.M. Lay cloths in both sitting-rooms, carry up lunch, clear 
away in between. 

2:00 Wash up silver, knives, and glass. 

3:00 Time allowed to wash and tidy. 

3:45 Get tea for both sitting-rooms, also staff's tea, wash up, 

and clear away. 

6:00 Take up hot water to bedrooms, turn down all beds, 

empty toilets, and fill jugs. 

7:00 Lay cloths for supper, clear away, and wash up silver 

knives and forks. 

10:00 Finished; go to bed. 

Seven shilling and sixpence, and "finished; go to bed" — the 
Woman's Movement is in those words. 



153 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

England's policewomen 

Long before the war the women had proved 
their case, but the door remained bolted. It was 
the war that broke down the door, and let a rush 
of women through into industries and profes- 
sions. In a few months they altered the con- 
sciousness of England and won their spiritual 
freedom. The vote, industrial equality, control 
of their life, will inevitably follow. There are 
five hundred thousand of them making shells. 
An entire military hospital has been placed in 
their control and under their exclusive manage- 
ment — doctors, surgeons, orderlies, messengers, 
superintendents. That was done by the War Of- 
fice, which has never been a rash or radical innova- 
tor in England. The War Office is now issuing 
requests for women doctors. It finds them as 
steady in emergency, as delicate in nice manip- 
ulation, as their brothers. The old cant about 
physiological barriers has been broken down by 
the pressure of a million casualties. Women are 
di'iving heavy trucks, running elevators and 
trams, even managing places of business, includ- 
ing a bank. 

154. 



WOMEN 

As yet it is in large part the same millions of 
women who were earning wages before the war 
that have taken possession of the new activities. 
Probably not more than five hundred thousand 
women have stepped over from idleness into the 
day's work. But half a million is a large in- 
crease, and that half-milhon are only the van- 
guard of the army that will be conscripted by 
England's need of every adult for increased pro- 
duction. The significance of the change does not 
lie as yet in the number of previously unem- 
ployed women who have entered wage-earning 
occupations. The significance lies in the new 
professions and the processes of industry which 
they have taken over. It lies in the work once 
closed to them, which is now opened for all time. 
A measure of freedom has been won that never 
existed before. Their right to play a part in the 
industrial and professional world had been chal- 
lenged. Their presence in the modern economic 
world had been resented. Inside of two years 
woman has ceased to be a question, and has 
become an accepted fact. 

It is a mistake to think that the hundreds of 
thousands of women who are helping to carry on 
166 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

industry while the young men fight were or- 
ganized and engineered by new-comers, that a 
spontaneous uprising took place. The women 
who led the new movement into hospitals, muni- 
tions, the tram-cars, and the police were the 
seasoned executive women who had long been 
successful wage-earning workers in nursing and 
school teaching, women who had long fought for 
social reform in labor conditions, housing, and 
the care of children. The amazing alteration 
in the economic position of women in England is 
not the work of amateurs. It is the sudden 
ripening of an immensely laborious, painfully 
slow growth. 

Opponents of the woman's movement have 
watched with a keen eye for a disintegration of 
the home resulting from the entrance of numbers 
of "home" women into munition factories. Neg- 
lected children, shoddily dressed and poorly fed, 
were what they feared to find. The showing has 
been all the other way. The reports from Wool- 
wich, for instance, show that the school-children 
are better nourished and better clothed than iii 
the days when the mother was a hack in the home 
over a wash-tub. A wage to a mother of £2.10 
156 



WOMEN 

has not wrecked the British lower-class house- 
hold, but has improved it. 

Radicals have played the same part in the 
woman's movement that they have played in the 
labor movement. It is not that the mass agrees 
with them or likes them or follows them; but 
they have clarified and given a coherence to 
vague subconscious desires of an inarticulate 
community. They have presented a sharply 
etched program to a blind urge. Their program 
is: 
'Votes for women. 

Economic equality. 

An open field in the industrial world. 

Those clear-cut demands give the movement a 
coherence, a cutting edge. But those demands 
are not the woman's movement. They are 
merely the instruments with which it can work its 
will. When it has received its instruments, it 
will then proceed to do its work. 

To change the figure, it is easy to see the 
portion of the iceberg that is above the water and 
visibly heaving down upon our man-made, man- 
favoring institutions. But seven eighths of the 
mass is below the surface. The genius of the 
157 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

woman's movement lies deeply submerged mider 
surface revolt, economic injustice, and resent- 
ment at man's unconscious scorn for the female 
mentality. The genius of the woman's move- 
ment lies in the imperious demands of her nature 
for worthy expression. Industry, hke the suf- 
frage, is a means by which she achieves her 
personal freedom and equality. It is a spiritual 
condition which she is seeking, not alone a new 
activity. Fame and money are not the supreme 
incentives to her that they are to man. For that 
reason her entrance into politics and work offers 
the promise of a humanized industry and a better 
state. 

My own personal impression in the first half- 
year of the war was that the women were quicker 
to get a start on than the men. There was 
almost a scramble on the part of women of leisure 
to volunteer for relief work. The women solved 
the problem of Belgian refugees by taking them 
into their homes, by organizing village colonies 
for them, by finding them work. In those early 
months I attended many dozens of recruiting 
meetings. I found that two of the most popular 
speakers were Mrs. Drummond (the "General") 
158 



I 



WOMEN 

and Mrs. Pankhurst, leaders of the suffrage 
movement. A group of women saw the war in 
its meaning to Great Britain, the costhness of 
waging it, the immensity of the effort which 
would have ^ to be put forth, long before the 
general public opinion of England was awakened. 
Women have revealed adaptability in their 
war work. They have swung swiftly to meet 
new conditions and solve unexpected situations. 
A good instance of the service they have done 
England is that of their organization of a pohce 
force. War conditions had created certain perils 
to the community. The absence of the father 
away at the front is not a benefit to the children 
at home. Boys were running wild and thieving. 
Other boys were being overworked. Immense 
numbers of men on leave in great cities are a 
menace to the well-being of excitable girls. War 
creates its own atmosphere, and there were both 
a looseness and a tension, strange combination, 
in the life of kliaki-clad England. A group of 
women saw the peril and had a remedy. Led by 
Miss Allen and JVIiss Damer Dawson, they 
formed the Women Pohce Service in August of 
1914!. There were half a dozen of them. The 
159 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

members have grown to three hundred, and they 
are now serving not only London, but Grantham, 
Bath, Hull, Folkestone, Wimbledon, and Rich- 
mond. Their duties are patrolling, attendance 
at police courts, home visiting, supervision of 
music-halls, cinemas, public dance-halls, and 
inspection of lodging-houses. They take the 
depositions of children and women, watch the 
parks, stations, and docks, meet Belgian ref- 
ugees. At certain munition factories they keep 
the women's gate, searching the women, and per- 
mitting no stranger to enter. 

Their uniform is a blue miUtary tunic, divided 
skirt, riding-breeches, riding-bowlers, and top- 
boots. The chiefs wear peaked caps. Their 
organization is one of chief officer, superintend- 
ents, inspectors, clerical staff, sergeants, and 
constables. 

When they made their start, fifty of them were 
drilled by a sergeant of police in a back yard of 
the suburb of Hornsey. The first town they 
worked in officially had a diocese of twenty-five 
thousand inhabitants and thirty thousand sol- 
diers. Their work from the beginning has been 
more preventive than repressive. They handle 
160 



WOMEN 

trouble before it becomes a court case as well as 
after. They suggest solutions. 

Commandant Damer Dawson, the chief officer, 
speaking of Leicester Square, the very heart of 
the night life of London, said: 

Take, for instance, Leicester Square. You hear 
people say that Leicester Square is infested by "night 
hawks" and bullies and so forth, and that it is also in- 
fested by abominable women. No abuse has been 
spared. It has been poured upon the women who make 
a trade and living out of immorality, but very few have 
said a word about the other sex, which is bound to be 
connected with the life of the London streets. One 
might think that there are only two classes of people 
on the London streets, the police and the prostitutes, 
and that the rest are innocent people. However, it is 
not for me to give you a lecture on the state of the 
London streets, except inasmuch as it touches our po- 
lice work and our experiences night after night. 

We find that things have very much changed since 
the war began, and are changing very quickly. There- 
fore you can not possibly write to the papers or argue 
about any social condition which existed even a few 
months ago. You must go straight to the streets 
night after night and follow up cases as you find them ; 
and this is what you find. There are bullies there, both 
men and women bullies, but not to the same extent that 

161 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

there used to be, for this reason: you have to deal 
with modem women on the streets, and you will find 
that the temptations thrown before these young women 
from the time that they are "flappers" is enormous. 
Mind you, they are light-hearted, aching for excite- 
ment, and they are non-moral. That is the result of 
social conditions. They have no moral training; their 
parents give them none, and they have very little at 
school, and they have very little religious enthusiasm. 
Therefore they come out into the world non-moral. 
Nevertheless, they are exceedingly human, and deter- 
mined to have a good time at all costs. They are 
mostly girls who have tasted the bitterness of life, 
girls among the five millions for whom there may not 
be a husband, and therefore they have got to make 
their own living. 

Then there come thousands of men, with hundreds 
and thousands in money to spend, and the young women 
pay the price. Do you think they know the price, nine 
out of ten of them, the disease and the misery that are 
going to ensue.'' Of course they do not know. 

The policewomen are able to touch a certain fringe 
of this work. None of us can claim anything more; 
but we are able to act as a tremendous deterrent. In 
the first place, certain streets which we patrol at 
nights we are able to keep absolutely clear. Young offi- 
cers, boys of seventeen and eighteen, who have hardly 
left their mothers, are taken to these streets by women 
who ought to know better ; but when they see the police- 
162 



WOMEN 

women they bolt. Ours is only patchwork, but it is a 
help. In a great many cases we are able to get hold 
of the young girls and to save them. Young girls and 
young men get to know us, and we move them on. The 
very fact that a policewoman is in the street acts as a 
potent moral shame to what is going on. 

I was very struck with an illustration of this which 
occurred the other day. 

"Are they friends of yours.'"' said a policewoman to a 
couple of young fellows who had taken hold of two 
girls. 

"How dare you !" said one of the men, quite furious. 
"Of course I know them; they are cousins." 

"I am the wife of an officer," said the policewoman, 
"and as you are an officer wearing the king's uniform 
I take your word for it." 

Ten minutes later the young officer overtook her and 
said, "They were not my cousins, and I thought you 
would like to know I am going home." 

Any person of experience reading that knows 
that Miss Dawson and her co-workers have a 
broader and more fundamental knowledge of our 
modern social problems than the average male po- 
liceman. The only police method in dealing with 
the "social evil" has been that of repression and 
harrying, interwoven with graft, and it hasn't 
advanced us any in the direction of a solution. 
163 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

Take another instance. A serious fight was 
taking place between two drunken soldiers who 
should have been in camp. The men had taken 
off their coats to fight. The pohcewomen cleared 
the crowd, separated the fighters, persuaded 
them to put on their coats, shake hands, and 
return to camp. The old orthodox pohce 
method for such a fracas was a clubbing. The 
only test of a method is, Does it work? The 
new women's way works. Success has been their 
answer to tradition. 

These new women officers have cut their way 
through red tape and obtained the right to act 
decisively and promptly. The military author- 
ities have given them the right of entry into 
houses in certain restricted districts, so that they 
can take hold of a situation before a rumpus sets 
in. The policewomen observed a drunken sol- 
dier enter a house which they knew to be occupied 
by a woman whose husband had just left for the 
front. This house had been previously suspected 
by them. They fetched the military picket, who 
came at once to the house, and with some diffi- 
culty forced an entrance. The soldier was 
caught and arrested. Several children found in 
164 



WOMEN 

the house in a dirty and diseased condition were 
taken care of by the policewomen and handed 
over to the inspector. Before the picket could 
enter, the woman escaped by means of a trap- 
door which connected with three other houses. 

These peace patrols have dug themselves into 
the community. One of them is a probation 
officer. The police use her to interview women 
who are being "summoned." There was an 
entire city street in a row, like one of our before- 
the-war Southern vendettas. Half the street 
had summoned the other half to court. The 
policewoman marched the whole street back home, 
and settled the case out of court. 

A constant protective watch is kept over the 
lives of children. From time to time reports 
have reached the policewomen of young children 
of school age working excessive hours during the 
school week. It was decided to approach the 
head-masters of several schools who welcomed 
help in the matter and promised detailed reports. 
In one district they found twenty-four paper- 
boys with hours varying from 7V2 to 25 per school 
week. The beginning hour in the morning seems 
to be from 6 to 6:30 a. m., so that the majority 
165 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

of these children will be working without proper 
attention to food and habits. Many may go to 
school without any regular breakfast. Of these, 
two are eight years old, one getting up at six 
o'clock, the other at 6 :30 a. m. ; one of them work- 
ing 12^/^ hours, the other 7/4 hours. 

Twenty-two boys take milk around. Their 
ages vary from 8 to 13, their hours from 7/4 to 
12^/2 per school week, beginning work from 4 :30 
to 6 o'clock A. M. One boy of 8 works 20 hours 
a week beginning at 4:30 a. M. Two boys, 13, 
house-boys, work 7/4 hours. Two boys work in 
coal-yards; one is 13 and works 19 hours per 
school week, beginning at 8 a. m. ; the other boy, 
aged 11, helps his father, and works 5 hours per 
school week. 

The question of child-labor presents itself as 
one of the root problems of the hour for local as 
well as for national authorities. The police- 
women see some of the results of boy fatigue and 
malnutrition in the listless, uninterested young 
people standing and loitering about, ready to 
follow after any new excitement. 

There are towns where no by-laws exist reg- 
ulating the employment of children imder 
166 



i 



WOMEN 

fourteen. The question has been before the 
education authorities for many years, and the 
enforcing of certain drafted by-laws is hkely to 
remain in status quo owing to war conditions. 
Employers prefer childi'en to elderly labor, and 
many parents regard their offspring as financial 
assets. The work of these women guardians will 
result in a better protection of child life, because 
they have exposed the evil conditions. The 
policewoman is an official mother. She does not 
use physical violence. She talks with the boys 
about gambling and smoking and thieving. She 
warns the girls. There are no fixed posts. 
Often she covers an area of two and a half miles, 
as in the borough of Paddington. 

War has let loose the high spirits of boys, and 
some of them, with the added stimulus of Amer- 
ican films, have taken to the life of pirates. 
London streets are a tumbling sea of adventure, 
where grocers' carts are the helpless frigates to 
be manned and pillaged. The new women 
"cops" pull the boys off the carts, and advise them 
to let the tea and jam travel on unmolested. 

This strange excitement of war touches the 
imagination till it sees placid planets as the prod- 
167 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

uct of German chemists. During one of the 
recent Zeppelin raids on the east coast, police- 
women working in the town were instructed by 
the authorities to patrol the streets and do their 
best to prevent panic or crowds collecting. On 
coming upon a knot of excited people at a street 
corner the policewomen assured them that there 
was no further danger, as the Zeppelins had left 
and that every one could return home in safety. 
Some soldiers remonstrated, and said it was cruel 
to ask the women to take their children home. 
They pointed to a light in the sky, which they 
declared to be a bomb dropping. The women 
wept and begged not to be sent home. The 
policewomen calmed them, explaining that what 
the soldiers saw was no bomb, but the planet 
Venus rising in the sky, and persuaded the crowd 
to disperse quietly and the parents to take their 
tired children home. 

All this soothing, daring work results from 
stiff training. These women go through two 
months of instruction in drill, first aid, special 
legal acts relating to women and children, and 
the procedure and rules of evidence in police 
courts. They are shown how to stand, to walk, 
168 



i 



WOMEN 

and attain dignity of carriage, for a slouchy 
woman carries no authority. They are taught to 
talk clearly and avoid mumbling, so that their 
evidence will convince the court. They are told 
off to bring in reports on a tour of the streets: 
"Come back and tell what j^ou have seen." This 
develops accuracj^ and power of observation. 
Patrolling in the public parks calls for patience 
to endure the monotony of long, watchful wait- 
ing, keen insight to detect undesirable citizens 
who will endanger children at play, psychological 
skill in knowing the mental criminal, who works 
by stealth and loathes publicity. 

Street work demands knowledge of the social 
features of the district, what to do with diseased 
and sick persons, where to send drunks. The 
authority must be broad-minded, using a warning 
word instead of arrest where the offense is petty. 

Oversight in factories requires an officer type 
of woman who will keep the women smart and 
good tempered, who will deal justty with grum- 
bles, and never bear a personal gi'ievance. 

The policewoman is different from the rescue- 
worker, the "missionary," and the social worker. 
She is a practical executive who can not long 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

delay with the one case, for there hes on her beat 
a mile of streets with a dozen other cases. She 
must show self-control and the willingness to 
hand over the problem to other agencies. Where 
her function ceases, there the mission of the social 
worker begins. In the ranks are nurses, medical 
women, school-teachers, women from govern- 
ment service, sanitary inspectors. Several ma- 
trons of infirmaries and hospitals are making 
good head officers because they are accustomed to 
leadership. The ages of policewomen run from 
twenty-five to forty-five. Between thirty and 
forty is the best age, because the woman is self- 
reliant, has conquered her hysterias, and is in 
full command of her powers. These women 
have succeeded because they have known how to 
avoid interference with the province of the men 
police. They have practised a division of work. 
There was a city where a particular wooded lane 
had been a hanging-out place for fourteen years. 
Constables and the bishop had been powerless to 
alter conditions. Four policewomen walked the 
length of it, spoke to thirty-six couples, waited 
with backs turned till they had accepted the sug- 
gestion, and cleaned the place up. 
170 



WOMEN 

"Which of you is the mother of the baby in the 
pink cap who has been left outside in the rain for 
twent}^ minutes?" asked a poHcewoman of a 
group drinking in a pubhc house. The mother 
had to come, because the opinion of the other 
guests was with the officer. 

Two girls were reported by the police author- 
ities to the policewomen as missing, one of them 
for fifteen weeks and the other for over five, and 
were suspected of living in some fields near a 
large camp. The policewomen on bicycles 
searched for them for two days, and finally dis- 
covered them in a filthy and starving condition 
and took them back to their parents. They have 
since applied to the policewomen to put them 
in touch with a home which deals with such 
cases. 

England is a mixed democracy much like ours, 
with fine elements and ignoble elements. But 
these clear-eyed women of the police force, like 
the nurses and welfare secretaries, gave me an 
assurance that an immense, untapped resource is 
there to renew fife after the wreckage of these 
years. 

War has discovered them. Peace must con- 
171 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

tinue to make use of them. England has need 
of them. 

Undoubtedly to the student of peoples there 
was much that was dreary under the beauty and 
peace of the old England that existed before 
1914 ; but what was most oppressive was the con- 
dition of women. Drunkenness and militancy 
were only two symptoms of a disease that was eat- 
ing out the heart of an ancient civihzation. 
Women were suppressed. They carried the con- 
sciousness of being caught in a social system that 
allowed no free play for instinct, intelligence, and 
energy, a system that forbade useful work, that 
silenced self-expression, that doomed the average 
middle-class woman to idleness under the mask 
of respectability, and the lower-class woman to 
drudgery. There comes a time with a theory 
when action is the only test, and British women 
have proceeded to put into practice their claims. 
I use the policewomen as an illustration of the 
new activity which has touched all classes. 
What I wish to show is not their isolated per- 
formance. What they have done is only one 
instance of the release of energy which has won 
spiritual freedom for the women of England. 
172 



CHAPTER IV 

IRELAND 
THE IBISH QUESTION 

I BELIEVE that the most helpful view I can 
give of the Irish question is a simple record of 
my brief visit, with the talks I had with Irishmen. 
I have no solutions, but I have a real sympathy, 
and I believe that the way to better relationship 
lies in the creation of an atmosphere of sym- 
pathy, which will result in intellectual under- 
standing. I write nothing here in a spirit of 
contention. I trust that no offense will be taken. 

The Irish Rebelhon had seemed to me a piece 
of strange, mystical futility. The failure of 
Ireland to be stirred by the plight of Roman 
Cathohc Belgium had seemed to me a failure in 
idealism. The iiTCconcilable Irish in America 
had seemed to me a set of men "scrapping" 
volubly for the sake of words and dissension. 

I found in Ireland a national aspiration that 
173 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

moved me as the French spirit of nationality has 
moved the world for now these two years. The 
proud and charming Irish people, with a culture, 
tradition, hterature, race, religion, natural geo- 
graphical unity, and economic system of their 
own, believe they have the right to as full a meas- 
ure of self-government as Canada possesses, in- 
cluding control of finances. Sane opinion in Ire- 
land is well aware that in any solution Ireland re- 
mains inside the federation of the British common- 
wealth; but the status toward which the intel- 
ligent Irish work is that of a self-governing 
nation, like the free colonies. 

Increasingly the present generation of Irish- 
men realizes that if old-age pensions, state insur- 
ance, land purchase, cooperative grants, the 
police, estates commission, and congested-districts 
board have to be paid for by controlled govern- 
ment and crippled autonomy, the answer is a 
refusal to accept their benefits. Ireland must 
pay her own way if subsidy implies control. 
"Irish expenditure should be limited by Irish 
revenue." This is one of the matters in which 
some of the older Irish political leaders have 
failed to represent the younger element. 
174 



IRELAND 

A living element of young Ireland to-day is in 
revolt against these older leaders. The men who 
have patiently and self-sacrificingly fought for 
the rights of Ireland through long years are still 
in control of the Irish party at Westminster. A 
part of young Ireland is as weary of them as a 
city state once grew of Aristides. To debate the 
justice of this state of mind is to multiply words, 
but not to clarify the situation. 

The young men believe that the ideas in con- 
trol of Irish policy are the ideas of old men out 
of touch with present aspiration. These young 
men have determined that their own ideas shall 
^prevail. 

Tradition is the one essential element in nation- 
ality. Tradition is the memory of a common 
experience, the deposit of a common suffering for 
an idea. Of tradition Professor Ramsay Muir 
has written: 

The most potent of all nation-molding factors, the 
one indispensable factor which must be present what- 
ever else be lacking, is the possession of a common tra- 
dition, a memory of sufferings endured and victories 
won in common, expressed in song and legend, in the 
dear names of great personalities that seem to embody 
175 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

in themselves the character and ideals of the nation, in 
the names also of sacred places wherein the national 
memory is enshrined. 

A race of writers sprang up in Ireland who 
had fed on the ancient Gaelic sources. The Irish 
people rediscovered that they came of a race who 
had elected their chieftains and who had possessed 
the land communally. The legends of poets and 
saints and heroes were recalled to a racial imagi- 
nation which is responsive, and that fine infection 
began to spread through the farms and cities. 
Ireland is not alone in this. She is only a sharer 
in a general mass consciousness. A movement 
of nature has operated throughout the modern 
world. No man can trace its source and origin. 
It marches irresistibly without visible leadership. 
It has taken control of a dynastic war, and made 
it a world war of peoples. It draws the 
scattered di*y bones of Poland back into a living 
organism. It lifted the France of the Dreyfus 
Trial into the glory of the Marne and Verdun. 
It coalesced the quarrelsome individualism of 
England into the unified, victorious socialistic 
state. The expression of this world movement 
is local and intense in Ireland. Clear thinking 
176 



I 



IRELAND 

is necessary, large concessions, a forgiving state 
of mind, sound economic and sociological meas- 
ures, a series of prosaic next steps. A sane 
trade-union policy, cooperation, education, reli- 
gious tolerance, clean local politics are demanded 
to free Ireland from poverty and dissension. 
Some of this ground-work is already being done. 
Much is still required. In the Anglo-Irish ques- 
tion there are many points of resemblance to that 
of capital and labor. Just as the lot of labor has 
grown steadily better through recent generations, 
so the condition of Ireland is improving year by 
year. There have been extensions of justice. 
Ameliorative agencies are at work. Only four 
years ago Erskine Childers, the protagonist of 
Home Rule, wrote : 

A great change has taken place in the- condition of 
Ireland during the last nineteen years. We all know 
its main characteristics, and I need only summarize 
the result. By contrast with her situation in 1893, 
Ireland may be said to be completely tranquil and com- 
paratively prosperous. More than half the tenants of 
Irish land are on the road to freehold ownership; the 
rest have their rights guarded and their rents limited 
by law. The great cardinal land reforms, late, terri- 
bly late, though they came, laid the foundations of a 
177 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

new social order, and rendered possible a change for 
the better in every phase of national life. Though all 
work not done by Ireland herself for her own good 
must necessarily be defective, we may frankly admit 
that both English parties in recent years have endeav- 
ored to do their best in limited directions to repair the 
frightful ravages wrought by past misgovernment. 
The extension of local government to Ireland, focus- 
ing the minds of Irishmen upon many of their own 
local problems, has powerfully contributed to the im- 
provement. Decent, healthy dwellings are replacing 
the old mud cabins of the laboring classes. There is 
a National University; there is a central department, 
with popular influence behind it, for safeguarding and 
stimulating agriculture and industry. Nearly three 
millions of money are distributed in Old Age Pensions. 
Economic serfdom has disappeared. A load of exorbi- 
tant rent, and a still heavier load of haunting inse- 
curity, have been removed. The spirit is freer, the 
physical welfare greater. Production is slowly in- 
creasing, and commerce is slowly expanding. 

The national university in the great Irish 
cities has been a belated, but now partly ef- 
ficient, piece of justice. These colleges carry 
on scientific research to further industrial devel- 
opment. There is training adapted to the needs 
of the locality. Trinity produces young doctors, 
178 



IRELAND 

lawyers, and literaiy men known throughout the 
English-speaking world. The Irish land com- 
mission, the estates commission, the congested- 
districts board, labor in their own way to restore 
the land to the peasant proprietors and to give 
them decent lodging. The department of agri- 
culture and teclinical instruction for Ireland 
informs the peasants in modern methods of agri- 
culture and the development of horticulture. 
The Irish Agricultural Organization Society is 
the long official name for the cooperative society 
of which Sir Horace Plunkett is president, which 
has 1023 societies, 350 creameries, 95 auxihary 
creameries, 233 credit societies, 222 agricultural 
societies, and a membership of 106,301 persons. 
It has a turnover of $90,000,000. The local 
government board has given Ireland an increas- 
ing opportunity in self-government. Indus- 
trially Ireland builds ships, makes linen, whisky, 
stout, ginger-ale, agricultural implements, bis- 
cuits. Agriculturally she raises food-stuffs and 
exports cattle, sheep, horses, butter, eggs. Agri- 
culture and its direct connections employ eighty 
per cent, of her population, industry twenty per 
cent. 

179 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

The institutions of education and executive 
management, the governmental and voluntary 
departments, the returning prosperity of her 
forming community, the growing wealth of 
industrial Ulster — all these are making Ireland 
a better place to live in than it was in the nine- 
teenth century. Ireland is not going down. 
She is coming up, and all that improvement is 
without reference to the Home Rule question. 

In the literary world Ireland is veiy much on 
the map. I saw three groups of Irish players, at 
the Abbey Theater, the Empire, and the Irish 
Theater in Hardwicke Street. These groups 
gave six plays, containing accurate observation 
of life and a dramatic idea, rendered with a charm 
of interpretation. There is to-day no dramatic 
growth so native and racy in America or Eng- 
land. The Irish writers and poets are among 
the best in our language. Lady Gregory, Yeats, 
James Stephens, A. E., Katharine Tynan, Dora 
Sigerson, Dunsany, George Moore, and Bernard 
Shaw are worthy representatives of a creative 
tradition. These poets and prose writers are not 
like those of England and New England, men 
speaking a literary dialect unrelated to the 
180 



IRELAND 

aspiration of the mass of the people. The Irish- 
men of talent are giving a voice to their race. 
Irish art is a national expression. 

The Irish are a religious race, wherein they 
differ from the Americans, French, and English 
of this generation. Unionists and Nationalists 
are believers. This fundamental conception of 
life colors their education, literature, and political 
ideas. For this reason, as well as for many other 
reasons, it is impossible for an outsider to leg- 
islate for them. No policy that omits the sac- 
ramental view of life can survive in this land of 
simple and profoimd faith. 

Such are a few aspects of a community as 
varied and delightful as I have ever visited. 
Now I return to my analogy of capital and labor. 
With each increase of well-being, the laboring 
classes have only struggled the harder for further 
gains. They aim at a share in control, not at 
well-fed contentment in a benevolent industrial 
autocracy. It is so with the Irish. They have 
made astonishing gains since 1893. 

"Now, we know very well what the Unionists 
are saying about this improvement," vvrrites an 
Irish scholar. "They are saying that it has not 
181 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

only removed the necessity for Home Rule, but 
weakened the desire for Home Rule." 

But the very improvement — improvement in 
education, in agriculture, in self-government — 
has only heightened the self-consciousness and 
intensified the nationality of Ireland. It would 
be nonsense to say to-day that Ireland is ''com- 
pletely tranquil." Granting that the basic prob- 
lems are those of self-development, a wise eco- 
nomic policy, a general, compulsory education 
(now a father can pay a fine of a few shillings a 
year and keep his child at work instead of at 
school), a cooperation in every department of 
community life, instead of the present dissension, 
which cuts efficiency into small wrangling bits, 
yet the fact remains that the central cause of 
unrest, the creator of difference, is the feeling of 
political servitude. 

The study of the Gaelic language is by some 
regarded as the hope of Ireland and by others as 
the mother of rebellion. A good-natured ref- 
erence to Protestants was interpreted by the man 
sitting behind me in the Empire Theater as an 
attack on Presbyterianism, and he shouted out 
his resentment. The trail of political division is 
182 



IRELAND 

over every cell of the national consciousness. 
Not one of Ireland's pressing problems can be 
solved in the present atmosphere. 

In the formative years of my life I was 
educated by an Englishman, an Oxford man. 
For nine years an Englishwoman has been a 
member of my household. jMost of my spare 
time in the last sixteen years has been spent in 
England — eight visits, and a residence of two 
years at one time. I don't pretend to generalize, 
but I do claim the right to record personal im- 
pressions that are based on a fairly wide observa- 
tion and experience. I find the largest measure 
of personal liberty in England of any country 
which I have visited. I believe the masses in 
England to be the kindliest people known to me. 
And this well-nigh general kindliness and this 
belief in the rights of the individual man have 
made England a champion of freedom and jus- 
tice, for freedom and justice are the social ex- 
pression of individual good-will and of reverence 
for personality. 

Edward Carpenter says of his people : 

The leaden skies of England, and something (if I 
may say so) rather gray and leaden about the people, 
183 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

have since my early days had the effect of making me 
feel not quite at home in my own country. I longed 
for more sunsliine, and for something corresponding to 
sunshine in human nature — more gaiety, vivacity of 
heart and openness of ideas. 

In dealing with an unsuppressed, gi-aceful, and 
charming race like the Irish, the Englishman is 
at a hopeless disadvantage. The mental alert- 
ness, the flow of language, the swift responsive- 
ness of mood, leave him shy and inarticulate, and, 
outpointed at every thrust, he takes refuge in his 
heaviness. The result is offense given and 
received. It is the tragedy of the English that, 
kindly and honorable as they are, they have 
established no real relationship with the most ex- 
quisitely imaginative people in the world. 

Just now England is in the most bitter war- 
fare of her thousand years. It is humanly im- 
possible for her to turn aside from the work in 
front of her to solve the wrong inside her com- 
monwealth. To shout her down is to strengthen 
her enemy at the moment of combat, and her 
enemy is the enemy of the human race. To 
weaken her is to weaken the last defense against 
that force which would destroy nationality 
184 



IRELAND 

throughout Europe. So the cause of Ireland, 
hke that of exploited labor and suppressed 
women, must wait the greater decision to the 
east. But when peace comes, the turn of Ireland 
comes, and she will be heard at the "romid table" 
of the imperial conference. The modified Lloyd- 
George "settlement" will again be suggested. 
That provides for the Home Rule Act for 
twenty-six counties of Ireland, but excludes from 
its operation six counties of Ulster which cannot 
be brought under its terms except by a new act 
of the imperial Parliament. This proposed 
settlement goes far in removing Ireland from the 
former parochial dealings with England, and 
places Ireland as a self-governing unit within 
the new British commonwealth. It gives her a 
better status than in the past, but it leaves un- 
solved the question of partition, and it withholds 
financial control. The situation will never be 
solved at one stroke, however bold, but, rather, 
by a series of next steps. The same cause for 
which the EngHsh die in Picardy in the noblest 
war of their history awaits their chivalrous 
response across the Irish Sea. A little nation 
desires to be free. In the final judgment of men 
185 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

England's greatness in this day will be measured 
by the treatment she metes to Ireland. 

YOUNG ENGLAND SPEAKS 

At my request, one of the younger English 
statesmen has written this reply to the foregoing 
chapter: 

If the Irish question has to be solved at all, it 
has to be solved by young England and young 
Ireland together. The very fact, admitted by 
all sane opinion in Ireland — that Ireland must 
remain inside the federation of the British com- 
monwealth — means that the solution is a common 
and mutual one which cannot in the nature of 
things be decided by the unaided efforts of Ire- 
land herself. For one thing, take the question of 
finance. Perhaps the most urgent problems in 
Ireland are the social reforms which can be car- 
ried through only by the expenditure of money. 
Not only would an absolutely independent Ire- 
land be unable to devote money to new reforms, 
but she would even have to reduce many of the 
social expenditures now existing under the heads 
of old-age pensions, state insurance, congested- 
186 



IRELAND 

districts board, etc. Youiig Ireland says that 
she wiU reduce her expenditure and limit it by her 
own revenue rather than accept a subsidy from 
England implying English control. Yomig 
England, on the other hand, is obliged to reply, 
in words famihar to American political thought, 
that a subsidy from England to Ireland without 
some control would be taxation of the English 
people without representation, and is therefore 
constitutionally unthinkable as ami:hing like a 
permanent arrangement. But the actual con- 
stitutional comiterpart of payments between 
states united in the same federated common- 
wealth is a matter of adjustment which need not 
imply any loss of independence or self-govern- 
ment. The only thing necessary to the creation 
of such constitutional machinery is mutual con- 
sultation. 

And somewhere here lies the real tragedy of the 
Irish Rebellion. Young England — ^the England 
that was finding itself in "The Round Table," 
in the Workers' Educational Association, and 
to a certain extent even in the Unionist Social 
Reform Committee — had, before the war, become 
inexpressibly weary of the atmosphere in which 
187 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

the Anglo-Irish question was carried on at West- 
minster. They knew not only the failure of 
English government in Ireland, but also the 
souring and clogging effect of the Irish party at 
Westminster upon the Government of England. 
They, in common with many well-known Irish- 
men in Ireland who had cut themselves off from 
political factions during the last fifteen years — 
the Plunketts, the Mounteagles, the Russells — 
recognized men like Connolly and the whole 
young Irish party, whose aspirations you have 
described, as far more competent to deal with the 
problem in a fundamental way than the Nation- 
alists at Westminster. Such members of young 
England found their ideas best summed up by 
that poem in which A. E. confesses "the golden 
heresy of truth." They really thought that out 
of young Ireland was growing a party with 
whom they could work in the immediate introduc- 
tion of Home Rule within a federated British 
Empire which more than anything else satisfied 
their longing for a comprehensive policy. 

Such men, cast down into the depths by the 
bickerings of July, 1914, rejoiced to see their 
hopes confirmed by the sweeping change in Eng- 
188 



IRELAND 

land which followed the outbreak of war — by the 
obliteration in all but a few journalistic and par- 
liamentary circles of the old pre-war contests. 

The hopes of this young England, which is 
now to a man in the trenches or in government 
departments absorbed in the overwhelming duties 
of war, have been cheated much as the hopes of 
those young American enthusiasts who in 1911, 
during the Lawrence strike, hailed the syndi- 
calists and Giovanitti as truer representatives of 
the aspirations of labor than the older trade- 
unions, have been soured and destroyed by the 
petty bitterness and futility of "the masses." 
But the disappointment was far more deadly. 
The Irish Rebellion was to them the stab in the 
back from just the people with whom they felt 
best able to cooperate after the war, and it was 
a stab all the more fatal because young England 
did not lose its respect for leaders like Connolly. 
They still say they would rather have seen Ire- 
land under the government of a man of this 
stamp than ten men from the Ulster army or 
from the orthodox Nationalist party. 

The average man in the street in England 
to-day, so far from wishing to govern Ireland, 
189 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

has only one idea, to clear out of Ireland as 
quickly as possible. Ireland to him is not a field 
for the administrative qualities of the Enghsh 
any more than Quebec or the Transvaal. It is a 
field for their political qualities. It is a part of 
the self-governing empire, not one of the depend- 
encies; it is a nation of equals, co-authors with 
the Enghsh of the British Empire, co-settlers 
and comrades-in-anns, not a "backward race." 
Yomig England insists that, while a despairing- 
severance of relations between England and 
Ireland in the spirit of Joan of Arc "as to the 
peace with the Enghsh, the only one possible is 
that they should go back to their own comitry in 
England," though it would be better than the 
present situation, would be as futile and umieces- 
sary as Lee in 1861 believed the severance of 
Virginia from ^lassachusetts. There is no need 
for Ireland to starve herself of money in the 
belief that a federal government at Westminster 
must mean loss of self-government in Ireland. 
And just because Ireland is not a backward race 
or merely a wronged race, young England can- 
not be content with the apphcation to her of the 
policy of Indian reformers in the United States, 
190 



IRELAND 

"Give the Indian his portion and clear out.'* 
The only thing that could prevent the inevi- 
table righteous and peaceful settlement of the 
Irish question would be a feeling in young Eng- 
land that the Irish revolutionists have gained 
applause not for all their aspirations and pohcies 
with which young England ardently sym- 
thized, but for the last mad mistake which led 
young Ireland to desert the cause of liberty at 
the very moment of Verdun. It is this applause 
coming from America — the bitterness of Roman 
Catholic pulpits in Boston and Chicago, the rail- 
ings of mass meetings in New York, the irrespon- 
sible perorations of Irish-American politicians 
— that chiefly threatens the future of Ireland. 
Young England saw a vision before the war, and 
that vision has been confii-med by the sufferings 
of the war. Young England will come back 
from the trenches few (how few!) in numbers, 
but with new determination for the future. 
They cannot and will not accept from America 
that last and worst doctrine of reaction, the 
doctrine of Lot's wife, who, looking back on a 
past already redeemed, remained a pillar of bit- 
terness for all future generations. 
191 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

THE SIAMESE TWIN 

To talk about Ireland and omit Ulster is to 
construct an Algebra by omitting cc, A portion 
of Ulster is resolutely determined to stay outside 
Irish self-government. This section is friendly 
to England, is in favor of British rule in Ireland, 
is Protestant, and is industrially a powerful 
community. To go into the history of this di- 
vision would be barren, so I pick up the situation 
as it is to-day. A large number of young Irish 
Nationalists wish the coming Ireland to be 
a seamless garment, one and indivisible. A 
famous song in Ireland is that of Thomas Davis, 
"A Nation Once Again": 

And then I prayed I yet might see 

Our fetters rent in twain, 
And Ireland, long a province, be 

A nation once again. 

The phrase "a nation once again" is as famous 
in Ireland as "government of the people" among 
us. When the plan of excluding certain coun- 
ties of Ulster fell through, the sentiment of young 
Nationalist Ireland turned against any compro- 
mise which would omit any part of Ireland from 
192 



IRELAND 

Home Rule, and the song was parodied "Three 
Quarters of a Nation Once Again." 

A farcical skit was recently produced at the 
Abbey Theater in Dublin, called "Partition." 
It shows a house lying exactly on the border-hne 
of Ulster and Leinster, so that one half the house 
is in each province. ("There is a village," says 
the program, "half of which would be under the 
proposed Home Rule Jurisdiction and the other 
half under the control of the Executive for the 
excluded counties.") Andy Kelly, who lives in 
the house, shifts his furniture to the Ulster side 
when the Home Rule bailiffs come to sell him 
up. When both sets of bailiffs come, he draws 
a chalk mark, and piles his household stuff in the 
center of the room. A fine scrap breaks out be- 
tween the representatives of the two govern- 
ments. Andy's summary of the situation is 
this: 

"I 'm a Siamese twin. I 'm a sort of a two in 
wan, an' now look here, it 's the queerest thing 
— what kind of a hole would ye be in if wan of 
the twins was to steal somethin' an' maybe th' 
other lad as innocent as a baby, shure ye could n't 
cut them in two an' ye could n't put both o' them 
193 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

in jail wid wan o' them maybe provin' an 
alibi." 

The play ends with "General fighting, furni- 
ture all over the place, women screaming. The 
village cornet-player is heard in the distance 
playing 'A Nation Once Again.' " As the cur- 
tain falls, Andy says, "Begobs the Siamese t^vins 
will be kilt and buried in the wan coffin." 

Professor John MacNeill, who was head of the 
Irish Volunteers before the Easter Rising, and 
who is now serving a life sentence in prison as a 
"rebel," wrote concerning the Ulster cul de sac: 

"I urge the Irish people to permit no sur- 
render on the partition question." 

And these are his reasons : 

Politically speaking, Ulster is made up of a compact 
Nationalist West in Donegal, a less intact Unionist 
East in Antrim and Down, with two great Nationalist 
limbs and two great Unionist limbs alternately lying 
almost from side to side of the province. If you take 
two of those horseshoe-shaped breakfast rolls and 
dovetail one into the other, you will have a rough ap- 
proximate plan of political Ulster. 

The partition of Ulster would give rise to a state of 
things for which one would have to go to the Balkan pen- 
insula under the Disraelian "settlement" for a parallel. 
194 



IRELAND 

If you cut the more compact areas of the Plantation 
off from Ireland de jure and de facto, you will make 
a real enemy of their inhabitants, and arm them with 
greater powers of mischief than they have ever pos- 
sessed since the days when the old race and the new 
were at open war. You would have a recognized 
Lesser Britain, and a lesser Britain irredenta stretching 
right through the heart of Ulster, with kinsmen and 
sympathizers all over Ireland. What opportunities 
for a lively time ! And the Ireland irredenta made fast 
in the midst of the British territory would not be be- 
hindhand. 

If Catholic and Protestant roughly correspond in 
Ireland to Nationalist and anti-Nationalist, there must 
be some other cause than religious sentiment operating 
through religious sentiment to create national disunion. 

The Ulster Unionist has been taught to regard him- 
self as a full-blooded Teuton and his Catholic neighbor 
as a full-blooded Celt. It is not a fact of race, but 
an illusion of race, that makes Ulster Unionists pro- 
British and anti-Irish. 

There are not two Irish nations. A foreign "fac- 
tion" is a familiar feature in many a national history. 
We have in the Irish nation of to-day a foreign fac- 
tion. I have found myself in Belfast right in the zone 
of fire between two stone throwing mobs, one Catholic, 
the other Protestant. Nobody will persuade me that 
either Irish nationality or British supremacy was the 
spirit that projected those showers of missiles. It was 
195 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

simple primitive savagery with religion for an excuse 
and politics for a super-excuse. 

Suppose we Nationalists declare every man who 
uses anti-Protestant party cries, or in any way inter- 
feres with Protestant demonstrations, to be the worst 
enemy of his country's cause. I would begin the task 
of persuasion with the economic unity of Ireland as 
the main argument. Once Ireland ceases to be a goose 
to be plucked, it will be impossible to persuade the 
English people to charge themselves any longer with 
responsibility for her internal affairs. With the ex- 
cess of Irish taxation once down, the burden of Irish 
internal administration would have been unshouldered 
by the British Parliament. Home Rule without finan- 
cial reform is a mere fantasy. So long as Ireland con- 
sents to pay Great Britain three millions a year clear 
profit for being misgoveraed, so long will the Unionist 
Party succeed in persuading the British elector to make 
no rash changes. It is safe to say that one-tenth or 
£30,000 is drawn out of the city of Belfast alone, and 
one-fifth, £60,000, is filched from the Unionists of Ul- 
ster. The question for Nationalists is the money 
question. The country will soon want to know what 
its political leaders are going to do about this appal- 
ling robbery. No self-government worth having will 
ever be gained except by the previous victory of a 
practically united Ireland over British spoliation. 

I give his analysis in detail, because it is the 
196 



IRELAND 

clear expression of a wide-spread, subconscious 
desire of Irish Nationalists for a united Ireland. 
James Stephens, the charming Irish writer 
whose "Crock of Gold" and "Here Are Ladies" 
are known to American readers, says in inter- 
preting the desire of Ireland to assume control 
of her national life : 

This ideal of freedom has captured the imagination 
of the race. It rides Ireland like a nightmare, thwart- 
ing or preventing all civilizing or cultural work in this 
country. 

And the way to obtain freedom he gives : 

The safeguards which Ulster will demand, should 
events absolutely force her to it, may sound political or 
religious, they will be found essentially economic, and 
the root of them all will be a water-tight friendship 
with England. We must swallow England if Ulster is 
to swallow us. 

Opposed, then, to the idea of an Ulster bit- 
terly hostile to any form of union with the rest 
of Ireland, we have the plan of a colonial self- 
government for Ireland inside the British com- 
monwealth, with a guaranteed friendliness of re- 
lationship with England and with Ulster. 

How to obtain this in practice? An answer 
197 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

was given to me by A. E. A. E. is the greatest 
living "pure" Irishman. By his "purity" I mean 
that he has lived his life in Ireland instead of 
crossing the channel for his career like Shaw. 
Many Irishmen of talent have transplanted 
themselves where fame and power and the de- 
lightful contacts of a prosperous civilization can 
be had on easy terms. But Paris and New York 
and London have piped in vain to George Rus- 
sell. Poet, dramatist, journalist, editor, painter, 
essayist, prophet of cooperation, organizer — he 
has carried on his various and vital activities in 
his homeland. "A. E. is the one great thing left 
to us besides the Nelson Pillar," said James 
Stephens to me. Russell writes one of the rich- 
est and most perfect prose styles of the present 
day, and he has devoted that technic to the 
production of "The Homestead," the official 
organ of the Irish cooperative movement. Very 
literally he stands on Irish soil, and speaks 
to the peasant population. He is fifty-one years 
old, with the laughter and generous heart of a 
boy, and he will die with all his fine hopes in him. 
There is something chivalrous about him, some- 
thing young and fierce and burning. His face 
198 



IRELAND 

is the face of the portrait of William Morris: 
the abundant beard, the living eyes, the look of 
the mystic who puts his dreams into action. He 
is the same sort of many-handed, many-minded 
man. This is the way out of the English-Ulster- 
Nationalist muddle as he sees it and as he gave 
it to me. To get the full drive of it, one must 
see the bulky, shaggy man, simpler and more 
human than most men, with fun and vitality in 
his talk. He said: 

The Irish question is not only national, but involves 
questions of international economics. Irish linen is 
sent over the world. Belfast ships are sold to British 
and American buyers. Belfast ginger-ale is sold in 
California. Industrial Ulster fears the laws that 
would be passed in a legislature where seventy-five per 
cent, of the members would be representatives of small 
farmers, men whose views are parochial and who have 
no knowledge of the intricate problems manufacturers 
engaged in international trade have to solve. Irish 
Nationalists ought to meet those views, and prove to 
Ulster that her trade interests would not be preju- 
diced in an Irish parliament, and give real and not 
verbal guarantees on this point. Protestant Ulster 
fears religious discrimination in a parliament which 
might be three-quarters Roman Catholic. The most 
powerful political organization in Ireland, the Ancient 
199 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

Order of Hibernians, is a sectarian and semi-secret 
society of which no Protestant can be a member. Ul- 
ster has some reason to be troubled. When we con- 
sider Home Rule for Ireland, there are five things 
which must be considered: 

1. The point of view of Great Britain. Great Brit- 
ain will always rightly demand that Ireland be friendly 
to the imperial alliance. It is clearly impossible that 
England should allow an unfriendly power to have free- 
dom for independent action in Ireland. 

2. The point of view of the Irish Nationalists. 
They desire the political unity of Ireland, and will not 
have partition. They desire full Irish control over the 
trade policy and over taxation. Until they win that 
full control, they will have continuous agitation and 
there will be unfriendly feelings between the two coun- 
tries. 

The point of view of Ulster in the following matters : 
Ulster requires assurances that the self-governing 
Ireland she enters into will be friendly to Great Brit- 
ain. Ulster carries on an immense trade with Eng- 
land. She builds ships for England. She exports 
linen and other goods. She has orders from great 
shipping firms and from the admiralty. These orders 
would not go to a self-governing Ireland with nagging, 
unfriendly politicians in control, and Ulster's trade 
would decline. She could be crippled economically by 
race hatreds expressed In an Irish parliament. 
200 



IRELAND 

Ulster demands guaranties both economic and reli- 
gious as to her own position in a self-governing Ire- 
land. The Nationalists should meet Ulster on all 
these points. It should be demonstrated to her that 
under Home Rule Ireland will be friendly to Great 
Britain, and just to the religious and industrial life 
of Ulster. Nationalists, in my opinion, should offer 
Ulster political power equal to her economic power. 
This might be arranged partly by proportional repre- 
sentation by dividing Ireland into twelve great constit- 
uencies, so that the Protestants could return members 
from districts where they are now without a repre- 
sentative. I suggest also that the senate, or upper 
house, should have a veto power for a certain number 
of years until the traditions of government were fixed, 
say ten or twelve years, and that a majority of mem- 
bers in the senate for that time should be nominated 
by Ulster. We have a model in the Canadian Senate, 
which is always packed with a majority adverse to the 
party in power. This is accomplished by permitting 
the party in power to nominate vacancies in the senate. 
The party coming in finds a majority of the opposing 
party in the Senate, and the old party so retains a 
measure of control. The Irish senate might be formed 
on the assumption that Irish Unionists had gone out 
of power and had left the senate packed with a two- 
thirds majority of their party. Such a device could 
not be continued indefinitely because it is not demo- 
201 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

cratic. But use that method for ten or twelve or even 
fifteen years until the political tradition of self-gov- 
ernment had become fixed and Ulster is reassured. 
For the Irish question, we need a psychological solu- 
tion, because in the years of dissension the people have 
tied their souls into knots. I am sure the Ulster men 
Would not use the power of veto against national in- 
terests for the period they were given it. 

Sir Edward Carson has said that what Ulster 
feared was not bad law-making. "What we do fear 
is oppressive administration." They fear that public 
offices will be packed with friends of the party in power, 
that the policy of "to the victors belong the spoils" 
will be practised. It is necessary to reassure Ulster 
that all public posts would be removed from jobbery, 
and that merit should have its open chance of win- 
ning promotion. The way to do this is to make all 
government positions, all posts paid for out of public 
moneys, whether under boards of guardians or county 
councils, part of a national civil service, so that job- 
bery on account of religion or politics would be im- 
possible. Along these lines of concession and balance 
of power I do not regard the special Ulster problem 
as insoluble. 

England should make the Irish question a national 
question with herself, not a party question. When- 
ever war is on, a coalition government is formed. So 
it should be in dealing with Ireland. Ireland should 
202 



IRELAND 

be treated by a coalition of forces in England, con- 
sidering its Irish polity as a national question. If 
Ireland were so dealt with, the opposition of Ulster to 
settlement would lessen. 

The present method of splitting Ireland and mis- 
governing it has led to a reduction of its population by 
one-half in seventy years. That is bad for Ireland 
and it is bad for England, because Ireland's exiles in 
other countries develop bad feeling against England. 

There are only two ways to deal with Ireland, either 
complete union, with absolute equality, or else com- 
plete Irish control of purely Irish affairs. The Home 
Rule bill as passed would not settle the question, be- 
cause it does not grant to Ireland the fixing of taxa- 
tion and the trade policy. Whoever has financial and 
economic control of a people fixes the character of the 
civilization of that people. There is no British reason 
for passing a Home Rule bill unless to settle the ques- 
tion. Either England must control Ireland by making 
Irish people into English people in sentiment and cul- 
ture, or else she must grant to Ireland the status of a 
dominion. England must retain control of military, 
naval, and foreign policy. Let Ireland send repre- 
sentatives not to the British Parliament, but to the 
new imperial parliament, which is certain to be formed 
after the war. Let her pay her contribution to im- 
perial defense prepared by assessors appointed for 
that purpose by Great Britain and the dominions. 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

What we should aim at is a kind of Sinn Fein impe- 
rialism, a complete control of internal affairs and a 
participation in the empire's polity. 

The feeling for complete independence had gradu- 
ally been dying down to a romantic feeling such as 
Scotchmen feel for Prince Charlie. Then came the 
Ulster and Nationalist Volunteers, the recruiting cam- 
paign, the rebellion, the executions, martial law, and 
the old feeling rose up again. It has become an in- 
tolerable nuisance not to have these political questions 
settled. I think myself too much importance is at- 
tached to the location of government, and I have my- 
self more hope in voluntary economic and cultural 
movements than in acts of Parliament. But with the 
present political unrest, there is no fixed policy in the 
economic life of Ireland. Business men wish a fixed 
policy. They wish to have more certitude in business 
matters. If Ireland was contented, it could turn to 
the problems of internal government. We have over 
two thousand national teachers paid less than thirty 
' pounds a year. The money has been put on the con- 
stabulary, which is over-manned. A government has 
its choice of leaving people ignorant and spending 
money on a police force to keep them in order or of 
educating them and cutting down the constabulary. 
England plumped for the police. No country can gov- 
ern another country properly, and never has any 
country done so. Countries can unite with another in 
W4i 



IRELAND 

a federation, but no country can rule another. You 
see the attempt made by Germans and Russians in 
Poland. But it can only succeed by exterminating the 
people governed. The plantations in Ireland were an 
attempt at that. 

In the last one hundred years Ireland lost the power 
to speak Gaelic. Only 600,000 of her people speak 
the language to-day. And yet Gaelic literature con- 
tains the dreams and soul of the Irish people for two 
thousand years. It is one of the oldest and most beau- 
tiful literatures in Europe. That lost race memory is 
a loss in the dignity and spirituality of their life. 
Imagine the Greeks without Homer. So it has been 
of late with the Irish in the loss of their national lit- 
erature — legends and poetry. The Irish do not read 
English literature nor have they accepted English cul- 
ture. That ancient literature of theirs ran like an 
underground river for the last century till it came well- 
ing up again in Standish O'Grady, Stephens, Yeats, 
and Synge. There is a reshaping of legendary tales, 
and Anglo-Irish literature will be powerfully affected. 
Gaelic schools have sprung up. O'Grady and Synge 
knew Gaelic. Padraic Colum knows it. Stephens can 
read it. MacDonagh and Pearse knew it. The Celtic 
spirit of Ireland is emerging in the poems and tales 
of modern Anglo-Celtic literature which are as accept- 
able to Ulster as to the rest of Ireland. 

A. E.'s solution, then, is to clear the political 
205 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

question by concession and guaranty, to forget it, 
and to get down to business — ^the business being 
cooperation. Is this the dream of Ireland's most 
glorious dreamer, or is there salvation that way? 

I left Mr. Russell, and stepped down-stairs in 
Plunkett House to the executive offices of the 
cooperative movement. 

"While the gun-running was on," said one of 
the cooperative organizers to me, " our move- 
ment was including both parties in the fight. 
Carson's men were arming themselves, and the 
Volunteers were arming against them. But 
both sets were working together in our society. 
Each had their guns buried with which to shoot 
the other, but they were busy in one creamery, 
working in harmony, and pooling their economic 
life. They differ pohtically, but their interests 
are one." 

poverty: the real irish question 

The real Irish question is poverty. Agricul- 
tural labor receives less than three dollars a week. 
The tenant and owner and laborer, when av- 
eraged up, receive only $3.50 a week. Even the 
brief and dubious money gains of war-time are 
206 



IRELAND 

not an offset for depreciated "plant," and the 
stock of cattle and equipment of agricultural 
utensils are steadily depreciating in these days of 
an increased export trade. The slums of Irish 
cities are among the worst in Europe. Dublin 
is known as the "one-room city," because over 
sixty thousand of her people are congested. 
Industrial labor is underpaid. Preferential 
through rates on the railroads have given Irish 
markets to Enghsh producers. Many of the 
farms are too small for economic worldng, and 
what there is of them is not good enough soil. 
Much of the best tillage remains in the hands of 
the landlords, and is used for gi-azing instead of 
for the production of crops. The hope of Ire- 
land lies in trade-unionism, education, and coop- 
eration. Ireland's real problem is to increase 
production and distribute prosperity. 

I found Ireland stimulated by the report that 
Henry Ford was planning a factory in Cork. 
He was said to have taken an option on a race- 
course, to plan the diversion of the river, and to 
guarantee a minimum wage of twenty-one shil- 
lings to his workers. The story ran that he had 
visited his mother's birthplace in Cork, and out 
207 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

of the personal tie grew his plan to revive the 
industrial life of Ireland. If the very i-umor has 
given cheer to an underpaid population, how 
much new hope will flow in if Irish-Americans, 
whose hearts bleed for Ireland, will invest some 
of their money in Irish agriculture and industry ! 
A few million dollars invested where their heart 
is will relieve a pressure on Ireland, which to-day 
is resulting in bad housing, under-nourishment, 
overwork, and an undue proportion of pauperism. 
The real Irish question is not solved by political 
wrangling and chronically jangled nerves inside 
the island, or by hot temper at long distance. 
The Irish- Americans who have planted the tradi- 
tion of Ireland's wrongs in the United States 
are two generations out of date. If they would 
get into touch with young Ireland, they would 
find they were chewing over stale grievances 
which the march of thought has long passed by. 
They are as much out of date as Marxian so- 
cialists. The present campaign is based on 
concrete issues, requiring a record of facts, and 
organization. American money is not needed 
for nationalistic propaganda. It is needed for 
agricultural and industrial development. Our 
208 



IRELAND 

rich Irish-Americans can do an immense service 
to Ireland. They can aid to set her free, but not 
by parhamentary debates, speech-making cam- 
paigns, and pitiful, abortive rebelhons. They 
can set her free by standing security for land 
improvement, better housing, the purchase of 
machinery and fertilizer plants. 

Had the Irish question been settled (by the 
Irish question I must insist that I mean not the 
comic-opera politics of gun-running, but the 
agricultural and industrial redemption of Ire- 
land) , this war would have been an easier task for 
England. The submarine blockade would have 
been a minor factor. Ireland's natural market 
is England. England is on an industrial basis, 
and needs the food-stuff of an agricultural coun- 
try like Ireland. Every mistake England has 
made in the long past in Ireland has cost her 
severely in money and lives in this war. A 
unified, economically prosperous Ireland could 
have fed England, and left her free to raise her 
army and make munitions, and the submarine 
would have been powerless to touch one shipload 
of produce plying across the Irish Channel. As 
it is, England has had to buy her supplies from 
209 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

several nations, and the long sea-haul has been 
over open waters where the submarine has sunk 
an ever-growing number of food-ships. By 
postponing the settlement of Ireland's status as 
an autonomous nation inside the British com- 
monwealth, England has lessened her own food- 
supply and lengthened the war. As long as 
Ireland is politically in a fever, she refuses to 
settle down to her real job of mastering the con- 
ditions of her own life, which will be determined 
by better land and more land, better methods of 
cropping, fertilizers, machinery, labor supply, 
organization for producing and selling, and rail- 
road facilities. There would be little value in 
writing one more contentious article on Ireland. 
So with the charges of a national incompetency 
and inefficiency, which those who deny self- 
government to Ireland allege as the ground for 
their denial. They find this incapacity due to 
three defects in Irish character: laziness, a tend- 
ency to dissension, and a tendency to grafting. 
They say that the Irishman is not a confirmed 
worker, that he loves to wrangle, and that he 
favors his friends at the expense of his com- 
munity when he is in political office. The Irish 
210 



IRELAND 

reply, "the penal laws, the ascendancy system, the 
union with its anti-Irish 'National ' schools, its 
*West Briton' ideals, martial law, these are the 
causes of that national incompetency of ours." 
One remembers in this connection the famous 
passage of Graham Wallas in *'The Great 
Society" on the rights of little nations : 

Athens during the last quarter of the fifth century 
B. c. was not well governed ; and if the British Empire 
had then existed, and if Athens had been brought within 
it, the administration of the city would undoubtedly 
have been improved in some important respects. But 
one does not like to imagine the effect on the intellec- 
tual output of the fifth century b. c. if even the best 
of Mr. Rudyard Kipling's public-school subalterns had 
stalked daily through the agora, snubbing, as he passed, 
that intolerable bounder Euripides, or clearing out of 
his way the probably seditious group that were gath- 
ered round Socrates. 

The time for argument on what Matthew 
Arnold called "barren logomachies" is past. Ire- 
land will soon receive her independence in the 
British commonwealth. The time for action has 
come, and that action must proceed out of Irish- 
men in productive agi-iculture, efficient industry, 
and clean and tolerant government. 
211 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

Among the happy communities of the past 
were the Greek city states, the twelfth-century 
communes, and the pioneering settlements of 
America. They were happy because the citizens 
had a measure of equalitj^ and because the terms 
of life included spiritual values. Life was not 
organization, knowledge, work, pleasure, effi- 
ciency, but through these means developed an 
excellence of its own finer than the machinery 
through which it functioned and the material on 
which it worked. By the natural conditions of 
the country and the temperament of the people 
Ireland is fitted to be one of the happy commmii- 
ties of human history instead of a land of sorrows. 
Peasant proprietorship in a fertile country 
among a people of social and imaginative nature 
ought to take the curse from life, because life 
under such conditions offers equality, intercourse, 
prosperity, and a free play for spiritual values. 

No old time battle-cry or politico-economic 
dogma can survive in the light of to-day's facts. 
Landlordism was the old cry, and it expressed a 
hideous injustice. But "if all rent were abol- 
ished in Ireland to-morrow the chief difficulties 
of the Irish farmer would remain what they are. 
S12 



IRELAND 

It would not raise the price of anything the 
farmer has to sell, or increase the produce of an 
acre of his land." "The long war over the land, 
which resulted in the transference of the land 
from landlord to cultivator, has advanced us part 
of the way, but the land acts offered no complete 
solution. We were assured by hot enthusiasts 
of the magic of proprietorship, but Ireland has 
not tilled a single acre more since the land acts 
were passed. The welfare of Ireland depends 
mainly upon the welfare of the Irish farmer." 

So it is worth considering his case in detail. A 
clear statement of it is given by A. E., who is 
one of the three men at the head of the cooperative 
movement. He says: 

The small farmer is the typical Irish countryman. 
The average area of an Irish farm is twenty-five acres 
or thereabouts. We can imagine to ourselves an Irish 
farmer with twenty-five acres to till, lord of a herd 
of four or five cows, a drift of sheep, a litter of pigs, 
perhaps a mare and foal : call him Patrick Malony and 
accept him as symbol of his class. . . . He is fruitful 
enough. There is no race suicide in Ireland. His 
agriculture is largely traditional. His butter, his 
eggs, his cattle, horses, pigs, and sheep are sold to 
local dealers. He might be described almost as the 
213 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

primitive economic caveman, the darkness of his cave 
unillumined by any ray of general principles. . . . 
The culture of the Gaelic poets and story-tellers, while 
not often actually remembered, still lingers like a fra- 
grance about his mind. We ponder over Patrick, his 
race, and his country, brooding whether there is the 
seed of a Pericles in Patrick's loins. Could we carve an 
Attica out of Ireland? 

Before Patrick can become the father of a Pericles, 
before Ireland can become an Attica, Patrick must be 
led out of his economic cave. . . . Our poets sang of 
a united Ireland, but the unity they sang of was only 
a metaphor. It mainly meant separation from an- 
other country. Individualism, fanatically centering 
itself on its family and family interests, interfered on 
public boards to do jobs in the interests of its kith 
and kin. The cooperative movement connects with liv- 
ing links the home, the center of Patrick's being, to 
the nation, the circumference of his being. ... I be- 
lieve the fading hold the heavens have over the world 
is due to the neglect of the economic basis of spiritual 
life. The cooperative movement alone of all move- 
ments in Ireland has aspired to make an economic soli- 
darity in Ireland. 

The social and economic service of coopera- 
tion is this: it enables farmers to own and 
use modern machinery, to buy feeding material, 
manures, and seeds, and to construct fertilizer 
214? 



IRELAND 

plants at low cost, standard quality, and on large 
scale. It gives control over markets, and slowly 
improves the transportation facilities for produce. 
It sells to advantage through its own agents 
instead of through a long circuit of middlemen. 
It gives a system for borrowing money at a lower 
interest and for a longer term. It pools the ideas 
of many men and gives an interchange and inter- 
action of ideas, leading to close, hard economic 
thinking, invention and discovery, and a wide- 
spread intellectual fertilization. In one place 
where a creamery was nearly started, the cooper- 
ators report, the whole scheme was destroyed by 
the announcement of a leader of public opinion 
that "every pound of butter must be made on 
Nationalist principles or not at all." But the 
work of uncoiling ancient grievance from con- 
structive enterprise goes on, and prosperity cures 
ill will. You will see in a single village the 
cooperative societies supplying seeds, manures, 
and machinery to the farmers, establishing 
credits, marketing eggs gathered by the women, 
running a station to improve the breed of poul- 
try, conducting a knitting industry, and selhng 
groceries and provisions. 
215 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

There comes a limit of saturation, and coop- 
eration has probably sucked up as many peasants 
as its present capacity admits. That capacity 
must be increased if cooperation is to increase 
in the next twenty years at the rate of the last 
twenty. More and better land, now held by 
landlords for grazing, must be freed for tillage. 
The existent railways must provide better facili- 
ties for farmers. A system of spur railways to 
mine-pit heads and of light railways through 
neglected districts must be established. The 
village of Belmullet in western Mayo is forty- 
six miles from a railroad. There are anthracite 
seams a few miles out from Dublin. Seven miles 
of light railway, at a cost of $1,250,000, would 
connect the mine with its market, and reduce the 
cost of that coal from forty-three or forty-five 
shillings to twenty-five shillings. One of the 
young Irish leaders says, "Any extensive work- 
ing of Irish coal or copper is contingent on the 
assent of the vast British mining interest to Irish 
competition." The creation of machinery and 
fertilizer must be undertaken on a larger scale. 
In short, production must be increased by the 
application of capital. Can that capital be 
216 



IRELAND 

found? Will it be by Irish parliamentary grant, 
by Irish taxation, or by foreign investment, or 
will the coopSrators themselves be willing to lay 
aside a percentage of their profit for the purpose 
of extending the movement till it has embraced 
all Ireland? A solution must be found, for a 
movement either grows or dies. 

The present situation is abnormal. The 
estimated value of Irish exports to Great Britain 
for 1916 is over two hundred million dollars' 
worth. Before the war they averaged about one 
hundred and forty millions. A clear gain in 
money of sixty million dollars has flowed in to 
Irish farmers. Fish, butter, and eggs have at 
times been held up for lack of shipping, but that 
is because the shipping has been destroyed on 
other hauls, which would have been unnecessary 
if Irish agriculture were developed up to capac- 
ity. 

Ireland sends live stock and the produce of 
hve stock to Great Britain. She sends sheep and 
mutton, bacon, ham, live pigs, poultry, butter, 
and eggs. Next to the production of live stock, 
the marketing of butter is the most important 
industry. The farmer has received increased 
217 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

prices to account for most of this gain, but the 
production also has been somewhat increased. 
Some of this extra money has gone for increased 
cost of production, feeding stuffs, and fertihzer. 
The rest of the money has been banked. 

"The last two years are the most phenomenal 
in Ireland's history," says the department of 
agriculture, and they tell me that "the farmer 
has come off in a gold coach" during these war 
months. Plunkett House, headquarters of the 
cooperators, tells me that there is undoubtedly 
more money return, but that the farmer's hve- 
stock has been sold, and must be replaced, and 
that his plant has deteriorated, so that he is n't 
any better off in productive wealth. Such a 
thing as agreement on any matter in Ireland is 
not obtainable in the present atmosphere of pas- 
sion. It is probable that the law of gravitation 
violates the Sinn Fein principle of self-help, and 
that the ethics of the gospel are under suspicion 
in four counties of Ulster. "What too many 
people in Ireland mistake for thoughts are feel- 
ings. Passion has become dominant in our pol- 
itics." But in the end Ireland must be ruled not 
by rhetoric, but by "first-class thinking on the 
ai8 



IRELAND 

life of the countryman. The genius of rural Hfe 
has not yet appeared." 

The Irish situation is the heritage of landlord- 
ism, usury, famine, land legislation, grazing, emi- 
gration. When these had operated, Ireland was 
reduced in population, and the good land was let 
out in vast grazing tracts, and the poorer land 
was crowded by farmers. These crowded areas 
are called congested districts. The congested- 
districts board exists for the purpose of cutting 
those areas up into holdings, enlarging existing 
holdings till they become a "paying proposition" 
instead of uneconomic, making roads, and creat- 
ing new holdings. This is a long job, and will 
consume many years before completion. It re- 
quires both time and money, and there is a short- 
age of money, as the British Government has shut 
down on the extension of financial help. 

"Counties like Meath, with the richest land in 
Ireland, are under grass and virtually destitute 
of all life save the bullocks which graze in their 
fields." 

The total cultivated area of Ireland is 2,400,- 
000 acres. In pasture and grazed mountain 
land there remain 12,500,000 acres. Live stock 
219 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

is to crop production as four is to three. There 
were 500,000 acres ill wheat iii 1851. In 1914 
there were 36,000, a decrease of 92^4 per cent. 
The total decrease in tillage has been seventy per 
cent. Eleven per cent, of Ireland is now arable 
land, and sixty-four per cent, hay and pasture. 
Eleven per cent, of France is hay and pasture, 
and tifty-two per cent, arable land. 

The land acts are permissive, not compulsory, 
and the landlord can refuse to sell. He does so 
refuse, and continues to hold the land for graz- 
ing. Compulsory purchase was proposed in a 
bill, but the landlords' convention rejected the 
bill, and the British Government was miwilling 
to press a contentious measure. 

While I was in Ireland tlie Earl of ]SIeath had 
his estate agent wTite in reply to a retjuest that 
he allow his uncultivated land to be parceled out 
for the production of food: 

His lordship is in sympathy with the general idea 
that more land should, during the war, be brought under 
cultivation for the production of food. Lord Meath 
has not a large quantity of land in Bray, and he would 
be glad to know if others, who may have more, have 
been approached by your society and. if not, why this 



IRELAND 

has not been done. He considers that the supply of 
milk in a populous district like Bra}' is a more pressing 
question than that of any other kind of food, and that 
any diminution in grazing lands would inevitably raise 
its price. For these reasons Lord Meath cannot see 
his way to accede to your request. 

In his case the request had been made that a 
portion of land be given to meet the national 
need. But the same refusal is widely met when 
compensation is offered. By a liberal use of 
state credit the farmer has got back some of the 
land which was taken away from his gi-andf ather. 
He has paid a fair price for purchase, which is 
from twenty to forty per cent, below his old 
rents. One farmer, for instance, now pays four- 
teen pounds a year toward the purchase of his 
holding where he used to pay eighteen pounds in 
rent. But the process is slow and partial. So 
in Ireland to-day there is still an unappeased land 
hunger. Still the holdings are often too small 
and too poor. Still half the land is held by land- 
lords, and agriculture is crippled. The Irish 
radicals write of the late Home Rule Bill : 

There is no provision for ever transferring land pur- 
chase in Ireland to the control of the Irish Parliament. 
221 



IXSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

It will be at least eighty years before land purchase 
is completed. 

There are five million good acres which ought 
to be brought back under tillage at once. If any 
of this land could be held by the farmer on a full 
year's lease, it would come under the teniis of 
the "agricultural holding" acts, and automatic- 
ally would be open for tillage. But the land- 
lord lets it out for grazmg for eleven montlis. and 
then snaps it back for the last month, so as to 
evade the provisions of the law. Tliis "eleven 
months' lease'' is as noisome in Ireland a^ the in- 
junction in America. As there is an inmiediate 
market for cattle, the small farmers bid against 
one another for grazing land. They caimot af- 
ford to wait for the slower greater market for 
grain which would be theirs if they boycotted the 
grazing lands till the owners sold them for tillage. 
Xothing short of a mandatory state policy will 
cure tliis priman- cause of Irish poverty. 

Every statement of an economic situation re- 
quires careful qualification. Ireland has made a 
steady gain since the ebb-tide of the 1850's. Her 
deposits and cash balances in joint-stock banks, 
post-office and trustee savings-banks, were re- 



IRELAND 

cently $410,000,000 as against $145,000,000 in 
1871. She held $23.5,000,000 in government 
stocks two years ago. The business of the rail- 
ways nearly doubled in thirty years, though much 
of this money went into Enghsh hands, and the 
railway system is imperfect and ununified. In 
1871 her emigration was 71,000; in 1914, 20,- 
000. No picture of degeneration fits the facts. 
But the reconstructive legislation and state 
grants and credit system have brought Ireland 
only half-way. A bolder, more drastic program 
must now be adopted if she is to overcome pov- 
erty and become the productive country which 
is her true destiny. Machinery and fertilizer 
must be purchased on a far larger scale, the land 
must be opened up, a better system of cropping 
used, factories for agricultural plant must be es- 
tabhshed, housing must be bettered. Faith in 
her future is what Ireland needs from her friends, 
and money as the expression of that faith. The 
labor- and trade-unionists of Ireland have faced 
this situation, and their conference stated: 

We demand that steps be taken immediately to bring 
under cultivation large areas of the grazing lands — 
by direct labor on an extensive scale under the Depart- 
SS3 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

ment ; by empowering County Councils to proceed on 
similar lines; by calling upon all local authorities to 
utilize every acre of suitable land within their areas 
now lying idle for spade cultivation, for potatoes and 
vegetables; by offering advances of capital to local 
bodies where necessary to finance these schemes ; to 
make unprofitable by punitive taxation the keeping out 
of cultivation of excessive proportions of agricultural 
holdings, and that the Government grant facilities for 
the manufacture and importation of agricultural ma- 
chinery and fertilizers and their distribution at actual 
cost. 

The Irish party's committee on food supply 
protests against the delays of the past, and urges 
that the congested-districts board and estates 
commissioners should be equipped to proceed 
with the permanent division of grass-lands. It 
advocates compulsory tillage. This would mean 
that the Government demands that the holder till 
a percentage, say from ten to twenty-five per 
cent, (later to be increased) of his land. The 
small farmer would thus be required to till six or 
seven acres instead of four or five. 

His reply will be, "Where can I get the labor? 
The disease which has attacked our great pop- 
ulations here and in America is a discontent with 
224 



IRELAND 

rural life." In less than fifty years 300,000 agi'i- 
cultural laborers have left the Irish fields for 
American factories. Till the war fifty thousand 
Irishmen every year went to England and Scot- 
land for the harvest. (That fell to 13,000 in the 
first year of the war.) The department of agri- 
culture reports, "There has been for many years 
a marked scarcity of agricultural laborers in Ire- 
land." In 1871 there were 446,000 male agri- 
cultural laborers and 62,000 female. In 1911 
there were fewer than 200,000 male, and there 
were only 4000 females. 

The reason is plain: better wages are obtain- 
able elsewhere. In 1914 the agricultural wage 
of Ireland had a cash value of eleven shillings and 
threepence a week. Why did not the farmer 
pay more? He was not able to. The average 
cash return to all classes connected with the farm, 
farmer-owner, farmer-tenant, and laborer, when 
added together and averaged, was only twelve 
shillings and ninepence, so the farmer was pay- 
ing all he could afford. 

Only higher production, through better land, 
machinery, and cooperation, can solve the wage 
of the farm-hand. The laborers will never be 
225 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

half so numerous as farmers, for Ireland is "a 
country of small holdings, where the farmer and 
his family are themselves laborers." The co- 
operative ownership of expensive machinery will 
increasingly lead to the communal employment 
of the laborer as a skilled mechanic by the co- 
operative community. If the belief of the co- 
operators comes true, that in half a century the 
whole business of rural Ireland (and that is 
eighty per cent, of Ireland) will be done coopera- 
tively, then we have the solution for the present 
scarcity of labor. "The agricultural laborers 
will gradually become skilled mechanics, able to 
direct threshers, binders, diggers, cultivators, and 
new implements we have no conception of. They 
will be members of the society, sharing in its 
profits in proportion to their wages, even as the 
farmer will in proportion to his trade. The 
laborers will form societies for collective farming 
as in Rumania and Italy." It is possible that in 
this direction may he the solution not only for the 
laborer, but for the bringing of Ireland back to 
tillage, for land purchase is doubtless dead. 
Neither England nor Ireland will have any 
money for land purchase after this war. The 



IRELAND 

money will go into industry and for the wages of 
industrial workers. But by letting out the great 
grazing estates to groups of laborers, the produc- 
tive power of Ireland will be increased. 

There is no quick way through the tangle. 
The Irish question can be solved only by the peo- 
ple themselves. Can they create a good life for 
their community ? Can they conduct a clean gov- 
ernment ? Can they release productive power in 
the nation, so that pauperism and ignorance and 
dissension will decrease? Can they lift clear of 
their past, forget injustice and misery, and es- 
tabhsh a cooperative commonwealth? With the 
coming of autonomy Ireland will begin to face 
her real problem. 



227 



CHAPTER V 

SOCIAL STUDIES 

WHAT OF ENGLAND? 

To feel the spirit of a nation at war is one thing 
and an easy thing. You can not help being 
caught into the current of their will and purpose. 
But to convey that spirit to your busy friends 
three thousand miles away is a much harder thing. 
I have been going around from man to man in 
England, trying to get just that phrase and sum- 
mary which would make the British response 
clear to our people. Each one of these men, who 
has been good enough to pause in his war work 
to help me, has given a flash of the island spirit. 

Lord N^orthcliffe said to me; 

"No one will accuse me of failing to criticize 
the mistakes of the British army in the early 
months. But I want you to know that to-day 
we have the finest fighting-machine in the world. 
It has taken time to build it, but now we have it. 
Tell your people that." 

228 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

Viscount Bryce said to me: 

"The British people are unanimous as they 
have never been before." 

The pohce commissioner of Scotland Yard, in 
charge of the secret service, said to me: 

"Have you noticed in talking with the pacifists 
how discouraged they seem? They have no sense 
of a growing movement. They are disheartened 
because the great mass of the British people are 
not supporting them." Then he turned to his 
telephone and gave instructions to call up Ports- 
mouth and find out the time of arrival of the 
hospital-ship. His wounded son was due home 
from France. 

G. K. Chesterton said to me : 

"Democracy is on the march." His brother is 
a private in the ranks. 

Lloyd-George talked with me of the welfare 
work carried on for the ministry of munitions by 
Seebohm Rowntree, who has turned from his own 
factories of six thousand workers to care for the 
health of a million government employees. 

"Here," said Lloyd-George, "is the greatest 
attempt ever made by a government to surround 
the lives of the workers with safeguards for their 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

health and well-being. And it was the making 
of munitions that brought us to it. It was war 
and shells. It is always true that humanity has 
to descend into hell in order to rise again the 
third day. It is only through hell that it can 
achieve its resurrection." 

But not all these distinguished men together 
have quite revealed the central flame, and then 
suddenly it was shown to me by a girl. She is a 
wage-earner in London, and every day on her 
way to her office she passes Fishmongers' Hall 
by London Bridge. This ancient place has been 
converted into a military hospital. To the house 
surgeon she wrote this letter: 

Dear Sir, I am taking the liberty to write to you 
to ask if it is true that often a soldier's wound could 
be the easier and the better healed were there plenty 
of skin available to graft on to the wound? I have 
been told that many wounds are badly healed because 
the doctors cannot get skin. If this is so, I would con- 
sider it an honor to be allowed to put myself at your 
disposal at any time in order that my skin might be 
taken to graft on to a wound ; I am prepared to ^ve 
as much as would be practicable to take from me. 

This is no impulsive movement on my part. I am 
obliged to come to town each day to earn my own liv- 
230 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

ing, and am therefore debarred from working for the 
soldiers as other girls of my own age are doing. I have 
two brothers fighting, and for their sakes I feel I 
must do something. I am writing to your hospital 
because I know of nowhere else; if you can find no 
use for my services I shall be obliged if you will kindly 
inform me where I could go. 

WHY THEY WILL WIN 

England is at war en masse, and the proof 
of it is not that she has raised an army. Any 
country can raise an army if it has to. The proof 
of it is that she has changed a cherished habit. 
That means a sph'itual change. It is a lot harder 
to break up a habit than it is to fight an enemy. 
The fact that two milUon persons are saving 
money to give to the Government for carrying on 
the war is the clearest single proof that the Eng- 
lish nation is at war. By temperament the Eng- 
lish are a colonizing, adventurous people. That 
means they are an open-handed people, to whom 
the careful ways of thrift are distasteful. Then, 
too, they are a race of individualists, doing what 
they hke with their own — a race to whom collec- 
tive effort is a bore. But they violated their in- 
stinct in order to win this war. For the English 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

were free spenders, and it revealed more devo- 
tion in them to raise two hundred milhon dollars 
in individual subscriptions than it did to raise 
five million men in recruiting. 

One has to show the English effort in these 
broken bits and flashes rather than by any one 
overmastering display. That is because Eng- 
land is a tangled, self-willed democracy, of a vast 
variety of purpose. But when England began 
to alter its life, to sacrifice what was precious and 
ancient, then it became clear that she had com- 
mitted herself beyond recall, that she was moving 
to an end beyond defeat. 

The appeal for war savings was a general ap- 
peal made to all classes of the country. It put 
money into the hands of the Government with 
which to wage war. That money is spent for 
production by the nation instead of being spent 
for consumption by the individual person. The 
terms of the arrangement gave to the "saver" 
security, an excellent rate of interest, and the op- 
portunity of withdrawal at any time. This use 
of money frees labor from "luxury" work to nec- 
essary work. The man grooves a big gun in- 
stead of pulling candy. The woman makes 
232 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

shells instead of fancy waists. This release of 
labor concentrates the national effort on the work 
of victory instead of leaving the workers dis- 
persed among parasitic trades. 

The heart of the war-savings scheme is this: 
you buy a "war-savings certificate" for fifteen 
shillings and sixpence. In five years the Gov- 
ernment will give you a pound for it. Less than 
four dollars has become five dollars. Of course 
the worker cannot make an investment of fifteen 
shillings and sixpence at one time. So he joins 
an association in his school, factory, store, or 
club, and subscribes his pennj^ or sixpence each 
week. These associations are like our fraternal 
organizations. They appeal to the social sense 
of the group. There are other forms of war sav- 
ing, such as exchequer bonds, but this system of 
certificate is the popular way. It is cooperative 
investment. 

If the person does not belong to an associa- 
tion, he receives a war-savings card, with thirty- 
one spaces on it, each for a sixpenny stamp. 
He buys the stamps at the post-office as often as 
he can. When the card is full, he hands it in, 
and receives a certificate, worth fifteen shilhngs 



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and sixpence, and good for a pound at the end of 
five years. 

Such speakers as Lennox Gilmour of the na- 
tional war-savings committee go around the coun- 
try addressing men and women in factories, and 
boys and girls in schools. This is one of the 
stories used by Mr. Gilmour in his campaign : 

"I met in a railway carriage a man who had 
just returned from the front. He was a mem- 
ber of the Army Service Corps, and I got into 
conversation with him. In the course of our talk 
he said: 

" 'I am one of those chaps that always like to 
prove what I say. Would you mind looking at 
my pay-book.' 

"This in support of some assertion he had 
made. I replied that I should be delighted, and 
I looked at his pay-book. The last entry was 
three hundred francs, which he had drawn for his 
holiday; and immediately in front of that there 
was an entry, 'War-savings certificates £lO Is. 
6d.,' which is the price of thirteen war-savings 
certificates. 

"I said, 'I see you have some of these war-sav- 
ings certificates.' 

234 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

" 'Yes, and I am going to get some more.' 

" 'How did you get these?' 

" 'Well,' he said, 'we get them in the squad- 
ron.' 

" 'Did any other chaps get them?' 

" 'Oh, yes, they did.' 

"I said, 'How did your squadron do?' 

" 'Well,' he said, 'my squadron — it was given 
out on parade that it was the backbone of the 
whole lot.' 

" 'What,' I asked, 'does that mean?' 

" 'Well,' he said, 'I will tell you. There are 
five squadrons in our base camp, and mine did 
the best of the lot.' 

" 'What did it do?' 

" 'There are,' he said, 'a hundi-ed and fifty men 
in a squadron, and we contributed £2239.' 

" 'What,' I asked, 'did the other four squad- 
rons do?' 

"He laughed. 'They did £200 among them.' 

" 'Well,' I said, 'there is always an explanation 
for everything. Why did your squadron do so 
well, and why did the other squadrons do so 
poorly?' 

" 'You see,' he replied, 'our major was keen, 
235 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

and he spoke to eveiy one of us and told us what 
we ought to do.' 

"I asked, 'And the other majors, what did they 
dor 

" 'They handed out the leaflets.' " 

That is the secret of the success which has at- 
tended this evangelistic campaign. It is the per- 
sonal appeal, friend speaking to friend. And 
the motive for giving is rendered in the head- 
lines of the pamphlets and posters; "Save for 
England." "Save for your country." 

In North Nibley, one of the smallest villages 
in Gloucestershire, the inhabitants subscribed 
eighty dollars in a fortnight. 

Wigstan Magna, in Leicestershire, is in the cen- 
ter of the hosiery and boot-making district. One 
of the factories has between three hundred and 
four hundred operatives. That factory pur- 
chased two hundred certificates in one week. 

Yarmouth has fifty associations and four thou- 
sand members, and has subscribed ten thousand 
dollars. This city lies on the east coast, where 
the Zeppelins have stimulated the civilian con- 
sciousness. 

It was out from Grimsby where the fishing- 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

trawlers have been lost by mines and submarines. 
The answer of Grimsby was made by seventy- 
three war-savings associations. In one week 
4600 certificates were purchased. 

At an East End factory in London 123 girls 
joined the savings cnisade in a single week. 
Only two girls are not members. In three 
months the girls saved over $250. They did it 
by chipping in their threepenny and sixpemiy 
bit each week. 

Norwich paid into the post-office $75,000 in six 
weeks. 

The boot and shoe operatives of Northampton 
are subscribing five thousand dollars a week. 

Keithley, in Yorkshire, is the heart of the 
woolen trade. It makes uniforms for the Rus- 
sian army. It saves five thousand dollars a week, 
an average of six shilhngs and eightpence for 
every inhabitant. 

The domestic servants of Gillingham in Kent 
have united in a war-savings association. This 
reminds me of the touching gift of ten shillings 
which I once received from an English house- 
maid for ambulance work in Belgium. Let no 
one doubt the spirit in which this money of hum- 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

ble persons is given. It is given because a lit- 
tle nation was crushed, and because their broth- 
ers and lovers are fighting to free that little na- 
tion. No high-blown dreams of empire, no lust 
for territory, no desire for power and wealth, are 
in these obscure gifts. They are conscience- 
money to Belgium. They are the pitiful earn- 
ings of a democracy passed over to a suffering 
people. 

In Plymouth, with its docking and shipping 
trade, eighteen thousand persons began to save 
in one week. 

At Preston, in Lancashire, $100,000 was 
turned over to the Government by the workers 
in the period of four months. 

There is an elementary school for 350 boys 
near Newcastle. The boys brought in four thou- 
sand dollars from their famihes in eight weeks, 
and then kept up the average of five hundi'ed dol- 
lars a week. 

In Batter sea one of the school-boys brought in 
the sum of five hundred dollars in pennies col- 
lected among the three hundred boys and their 
working families in ten months. 

The thing that irritates us about England is 
238 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

the same thing that offends us at home. Here 
is no well-oiled autocracy that runs on a single 
track to a visible goal. Instead of that clean, 
smooth, organized, docile affair, it is a democracy, 
with an immensely rich variety of life sprawling 
all over the place. The air is full of voices, be- 
cause eveiy one is allowed to speak. If you 
don't hke it, remember what it is that you don't 
like : it is a free people, choosing to make its own 
mistakes, living its own life, and just now out on 
the war-path to chase some trespassers off the 
premises. Doubtless, if the critics were running 
the performance, they would give a more unified 
and polished proceeding. But no group of per- 
sons are running this war. The people are run- 
ning it. So, instead of losing strength as the 
pressure increases, they gather force and mo- 
mentum with each mistake. They teach them- 
selves by failure. The will of the great Gei-man 
general staff can be snapped by defeat, because 
the staff is a handful of men. But the will of 
45,000,000 people can not be broken, because it 
is the will of these school-boys and working-girls, 
of domestic sei*vants and munition-workers, of a 
democracy whose sense of pity and justice has 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

been touched. The mistake in estimating the 
Enghsh effort is to measure it at any given time, 
because it is a continually growing effort. It is 
like a gathering of waters from mountain streams 
and the drift of hills and from inexhaustible 
rains. The confluence keeps widening and deep- 
ening from a thousand tributaries. The pool 
can be emptied, and soon it is not only filled again, 
but is larger than before. 

The English are a "sentimental nation." I 
quote a distinguished English officer when I say 
that. Captain Basil Williams. It is true. They 
are as sentimental as Americans. An appeal to 
cold reason, to personal aggrandizement, to a 
rainy day, or to a shadowy future, does not move 
them in the slightest. But something that con- 
cerns the welfare of helpless children or of per- 
sons whom they love releases all that is best in 
the English race. I know this, because I worked 
in a Red Cross London office in the early weeks 
of the war, and I found that the smallest appeal 
to the English public for help in clothing Bel- 
gians brought in a large response — a response, in 
fact, so overwhelming that it stuffed the ofiice 
240 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

rooms with supplies. Personally I have never 
dealt with a public that is so swiftly generous. 
When the full facts of Belgian relief are made 
public, it will be found that it is the English who 
have fed them and sheltered them, raised the 
greater part of the money, widened and adjusted 
their own home life in order to absorb an army of 
refugees, and steadily continued to provide funds 
without spurts and without fatigue. No better 
proof of this racial sentiment and kindliness can 
be had than by studying a few of the fifty-four 
million posters and leaflets of recruiting, and the 
hundreds of thousand publications for war sav- 
ing. The appeal is rarely to self-interest. The 
appeal is to the heart, to the great objects of the 
war, the ideal of liberty, the cause of freedom. 
This national saving is not being done by ob- 
scure, hard-working Enghshmen and English- 
women to make their own old age cozy. It is 
being done to free Belgium and strengthen de- 
mocracy. If the evangelists who have gone 
about Britain preaching war savings had spoken 
to a commercial motive, they would have whistled 
in vain. 

^4.1 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

dragons' teeth 

England is developing a set of problems at 
lightning speed that will require a generation to 
uncoil. I can only indicate them. It would fill 
another volume even to state them in detail. 

The first attempt to treat comprehensively the 
new machinery and buildings created by war 
needs has been made by the annual "Engineering 
Supplement" of "The Times." Wliat is to be 
done with this new plant? has been the question 
asked by manj^, and answered by none. Mr. 
Hodge, the minister of labor, states that seventy- 
five million dollars of new capital has been ex- 
pended in the extension of plant in the iron and 
steel trade. He estimates that by the end of the 
war the sum will be one hundred and fifty mil- 
lions. He says: "I don't care whether it is by 
tariffs, by prohibition, by bounty, or any other 
method, the plant in our country must be util- 
ized." Private plants, numbering four thousand 
seven hundred, have greatly expanded. There 
are over ninety-five new national factories. The 
"Engineering Supplement" quotes one firm as 
prophesying "a reduction in the proportion of 
242 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

three machines to one available for future use." 
A fii'm of marine engineers says that sixty 
per cent, of the new machines will have to be 
scrapped, because the tools are over-driven and 
worn out. But even these estimates leave from 
twenty-five to forty per cent, of the new ma- 
chinery available, and this is an enormous ex- 
pansion in productive capacity. Thus in one 
year armament firms introduced twenty-five hun- 
dred new machine tools. The large majority of 
engineering firms agree that these works, with 
their new machinery, will be used for the inten- 
sive manufacture of standardized articles. The 
assembling of parts at these central plants has es- 
tablished manufacturing practice in the use of 
gages, and created the conditions for standard 
and interchangeable manufacture. As one firm 
writes : 

"In small tools — twist drills and milling cut- 
ters — we believe that by standardization and 
judicious pubhcity we may fill a large portion of 
the business held formerly by Germany and the 
United States." 

One hundred thousand gages have been made 
in the technical institutes in the last eighteen 
243 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

months. The gage standardizes the engineering 
industry, and enables it to produce on a vast scale 
a great variety of manufactured articles. Stand- 
ardization is essential to low-cost manufacture 
and large output, and the establishment of stand- 
ard is dependent on the accuracy of gages, de- 
fining specified dimensions of absolute magni- 
tude, and limiting permissible variation. 
A professional engineer writes: 

Our locomotives differ only in relatively small de- 
tails, excepting valve-gears. The main sizes of cylin- 
ders, piston-rods, connecting-rods, side-rods, crank 
axles differ only very slightly in the same class of en- 
gines. . . . Hundreds of various forms of 12-in. 
X 20-in. horizontal engines exist, differing only in a 
very small degree in the actual details that count in 
actual vrear and tear and the life of the engine. Could 
not all these details be agreed and standardized.? If 
a few more usual types of engines — marine, steam 
rollers, etc. — were standardized, quite a number of our 
present munition factories could be engaged in manu- 
facturing connecting-rods and side-rods only, others 
the cylinders and pistons, others the valve-gears, etc. ; 
and in busy areas, without much carting, whole en- 
gines could thus be assembled in special shops dealing 
with special engines to the great gain of our home, 
colonial, and foreign customers. A similar course is 
244 



J 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

demanded very specially for electrical machinery, fit- 
tings, and telephones. 

The munition factories could further be used to 
great advantage in fostering and nursing the British 
production of agricultural machinery, at present sadly 
behindhand, and manufacturing it as standard repeti- 
tion work. They would also be suitable for making 
improved machine tools, as well as mining tools, such as 
rock-drills, etc. ; and standard ships would be greatly 
improved if fitted not only with the standard engines 
already mentioned, but also standard winches, pumps, 
steering-gear, refrigerating-apparatus, etc. 

The output in the engineering trade can be 
increased at least twenty-five per cent., even with 
the machinery that existed before the war, and 
with the new machinery that percentage will go 
considerably higher. 

Inevitably standardization leads to organiza- 
tion and the creation of combines or trusts. 
Motor-car makers suggest the use of the great 
new plants for the purpose of producing cheap 
cars to compete with those of American make. 
Already efforts are being made to bring about a 
combination of British makers. 

But it is not alone in the engineering trades 
that trusts are likely to be formed. Already 
245 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

capital is concentrating in other industries. 
Lord Rhondda purchased a group of Welsh col- 
lieries, and the "Welsh Outlook" reports: 

Lord Rhondda now controls over 3^^ millions of cap- 
ital [pounds, not dollars], pays 2^^ millions in wages 
every year, and is virtually the dictator of the eco- 
nomic destiny of a quarter of a million miners. Ru- 
mors are also current that Lord Rhondda is extending 
his control over the press of Wales. 

To control such vast, irresponsible economic 
power as his will be the task of Parliament; but 
here we meet with a new war-created problem. 
During the war Parliament has largely lost its 
control over government, which is administered 
to-day by a temporary group of lawyers, finan- 
ciers, and imperialists, surrounded by a larger 
group of permanent expert officials. And this 
group in turn is enlarged by a small army of vol- 
unteer social workers. Not only do these hidden 
experts administer government, but they create 
new legislation. As a government investigator 
reports : 

The change in the mode of industrial legislation 
may be summed up as a tendency to move from the 
politician towards the expert. 
246 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

Even before the war men were saying: "The 
poHtical machine of to-day presupposes that pop- 
ular opinion shall have no initiative. Officialdom 
increases at the expense of the remaining social 
classes." 

This is a tendency in the direction of beau- 
reaucracy, and the value of it rests in the intel- 
ligence and character of these inner manipulators 
and their responsiveness to public need. A par- 
liamentary committee sits on its bill of recom- 
mendations, like a hen on its nest, and rises with 
a cackle. Sometimes the product, when hatched, 
is as distressing and unexpected as a duck's egg 
in the poultry farm. I suspect that the recon- 
struction committee and the franchise committee 
are going to find that their sober, well-rounded 
draft of recommendations will develop startling 
methods of locomotion. The law itself, hatched 
in the privacy of committee-rooms, sallies out with 
a special dynamic of its own. 

We have lost all surprise that our correspondence 
should be pawed over before we see it, our houses in- 
vaded by competent or incompetent authorities and 
their representatives, our religion regulated or otherwise 
catechised. 

247 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

So says one of the "Cambridge Magazine" 
group, who have retained their sanity in a war 
which temporarily mihinged H. G. Wells and 
Arnold Bennett, and hfted Austin Harrison, 
St. Loe Strachey, Leo Maxse, Gwynne, Horatio 
Bottomley, Robert Blatchford, and NorthcHffe 
into leadership of pubhc opinion. To these crea- 
tors of constructive thought, "out to beat the 
Boches," such a question as "Who shall guard the 
guardians?" is academic in " a world of blood and 
iron, controlled by men who do not take what 
they would call a Sunday-school view," as the 
realist editor of the "Spectator" writes. 

But Parliament was at least an honest attempt 
to give the people a check on the behavior of the 
men in power. And now this inside clique has 
taken away Parliament, and no one knows where 
they have secreted it. When it has been discov- 
ered and restored, it will have still other problems 
with which to wrestle. 

How are the three thousand million pounds 
of national debt to be paid for? Indirect taxa- 
tion means high prices on food and clothing, a 
high cost of living. Taxation of income, death 
duties, conscription of profits, is "class legisla- 
248 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

tion." The only final way out here i^ of course 
to add to taxation increased production. A man 
pays his debts by successful work not alone by 
manipulating the market, but mainly by provid- 
ing it with commodities. 

But meanwhile high wages and high prices are 
leading to a demand for protection. England 
is talking of coming over on the good old Mc- 
Kinley American basis. The ancient battle- 
ground of tariff reform is going to be churned 
into dust and heat. For a growing group of 
Tories, reinforced by converts, like the new min- 
ister of labor, are finding the source of all eco- 
nomic weakness in free trade. A convenient, one- 
phrase summary solution of a complex matter is 
always appreciated by men who don't enjoy the 
process of organizing thought. This is no sud- 
den conversion for a portion of the Tories. Dis- 
raeh held that "the ultimate aim of the Free 
Trader was to govern England in the interest of 
the Industrialist," as Butler points out in his able 
study of "The Tory Tradition." "I wish," said 
Disraeli, "to see our national prosperity upheld 
alike by a skilful agriculture and by an extended 
commerce." 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

That "alike" to be effective would require some 
of the same magic which Joshua used on the set- 
ting sun, for England is an industrial coun- 
try. But Disraeli and many of the later Tory 
protectionists acted from long-held conviction. 
Whereas there is a touch of extempore when Mr. 
Hodge, the new minister of labor, intoxicated by 
his association with peers of the realm, cries out 
in Pisgah vision that England is done with free 
trade. At least it will pay him to study the 
happy industrial proletariat in Fall River, Law- 
rence, and our other protected cities before he 
turns to tariff reform as the sole salvation of a 
country that requires immense quantities of raw 
material. 

This is the danger which England faces, that 
her leaders will run after panaceas of protection, 
business government, scientific management, in- 
stead of dealing with what is the heart of each one 
of her problems — human relationship. 

CHANGE 

At the Labor party conference in Manchester 
in the first month of 1917 one of the leaders said: 

If the soldier was worth two pounds a week when he 
250 



i 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

was destroying things, was he not worth two pounds 
when he was producing? A country which can find 
milhons of "quids" to feed the cannon's mouth can 
find millions to feed the worker's mouth. 

The other day I was sitting at luncheon with 
the mayor of one of the great English cities. He 
said to me: 

Never again will there be the cry of "No money to 
spend." A thousand million for war, and you haggle 
over twenty millions for education? Give us educa- 
tion. Continue the high wages. Don't knock off the 
war bonuses. Make them permanent. Pay unskilled 
labor a minimum of thirty shillings, and later raise it 
to two pounds. We don't need to worry about the 
skilled trade-unionists. Let them fight for their three 
and four pounds. There will be no trouble after the 
war. Labor will obtain its demands. Wages can't be 
lowered. The workers won't let them. 

That is one of the new ideas brought into Eng- 
lish life by the war: there must be a better use 
of money and a wider distribution of it than in 
the past. This idea will be applied, for instance, 
to the care of motherhood and child welfare. At 
the maternity centers one has now the spectacle 
of the state keeping the mother and child alive, 
but under-nourished. If the state is to intervene 
251 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

at all, it must do so vigorously. Otherwise the 
cost of intervention, which is paid for by taxa- 
tion, fails to result in a sturdy race, paying back 
the subsidy by production. There is a phrase in 
golf about following through the stroke. It ad- 
mirably expresses the thoroughness that is needed 
in social reform. 

That imperial and foreign policy concerns the 
individual worker, and can make him prosperous 
or uncomfortable, is another idea which the war 
has brought to the British mind. Imperial pol- 
icy, which by its very nature is democratic, is it- 
self a foreign policy. When you shovel together 
free nations, which are a belt around the world, 
you have necessarily established a series of con- 
tacts with backward races, subject peoples, and 
imperfect democracies. The domestic policy 
must be influenced by the foreign policy. As an 
instance, one of the first matters to be taken up 
by the British imperial conference will be that 
of Ireland. The recoil of this on foreign pohcy 
will be powerful. It will clear the air for an 
Anglo-American understanding. Great Britain, 
in accepting the idea of a British commonwealth, 
252 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

has in reality extended the principle of demo- 
cratic control to foreign policy. This means a 
lessening of secret diplomacy. It is a coherent, 
thoughtful, and determined effort to put into ex- 
ecution the excellent desires which The Hague 
Conference stimulated, but did not make effec- 
tive. One of the duties of a modern nation is 
to induce its citizens to exercise the responsibili- 
ties which they in reahty possess, but do not care 
to acknowledge. It has required a preliminary 
course of education to accustom the British 
dominions to the idea that they were concerned 
with foreign policy. By groups of informal con- 
ference, by much excellent pamphleteering in 
"The Round Table," by all sorts of books, articles, 
and talks from Cromer, Milner, Lionel Curtis, 
P. H. Kerr, Ray Lankester, and Woolf, the re- 
sponsibilities of the British state have been em- 
phasized. The pressure of the war has served 
to accelerate a tendency of thought that was al- 
ready in operation. In fact, none of these ideas 
is really new. All have been familiar to thinkers 
for a number of years, but there is never any 
large number of thinkers loose on this planet at 
253 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

any one moment. So it takes time for thought 
to shake down among the people, and finally to 
reach an application in government. 

As these ideas spread, the British public is be- 
ginning to keep a close tab on its leaders. It in- 
sists that they be representative, and when they 
take a side-track, the democracy cuts loose and 
leaves them lonely. The war has given us three 
instances of this in Hughes of Australia, John 
Redmond, and Mrs. Pankhurst. Mr. Hughes 
was elected premier of Australia to represent a 
democratic community in terms of social legisla- 
tion and administration. He sailed to England, 
became inoculated with the belief that he was a 
war-lord, advocated at the Paris conference a 
trade boycott, which would have isolated Eng- 
land from the markets of the world more effectu- 
ally than a shoal of submarines, and finally, fed 
by flattery, swelled to the role of dictator and 
declared for conscription. His home people 
voted him down, some of his cabinet resigned, and 
to-day he is a minority premier. "Stick to your 
last" is the meaning of the swift trouncing which 
the Australian democracy gave him. 

John Redmond is head of the Irish National- 
254 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

ists, but he no longer represents young Ireland. 
And the reason is that, in a burst of parliamen- 
tary fervor, he pledged Ireland to the cause of 
the Allies. That was not for him to do. He 
was sent to Westminster to push through Home 
Rule, not to cooperate with Downing Street in 
foreign policy. The Irish people refused to be 
picked up in his right hand and set down in the 
trenches. 

When war broke out Mrs. Pankhurst dropped 
her militant campaign and went out recruiting. 
Ever since then she has watched the Balkan de- 
velopments, pounded Lord Grey, urged a fight 
to a finish. She not only dropped her militant 
campaign; she dropped the woman question. 
She no longer follows social legislation, the 
woman's wage, hours of over-time. But she was 
a leader precisely because of the woman question ; 
so her following has dropped away, and she is no 
longer ranked by the women reformers as one of 
the general staff. Thus the organ of the women 
trade-unionists, "The Woman Worker," writes 
a "message that might have come" from Mrs. 
Pankhurst : 

"I desire to inform members of the Federation 
255 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

that in my view their duty should be to march in 
as many processions, create as much disturbance, 
and take as many collections as possible." And 
there is a more deadly home-thrust than that. 
Her own daughter, Sylvia Pankhurst, has gone 
on with the work of social reform for women, and 
to-day has a strong following. There is another 
reason why Mrs. Pankhurst has lost her follow- 
ing, and this is that her following have under- 
gone a psychological change; but of that I will 
speak later. What concerns me here is that Mrs. 
Pankhurst abandoned the woman's movement for 
the national cause, and that in doing this she lost 
control of her part of the woman's movement. 

I am not engaged here in debating the ques- 
tion whether Mr. Hughes was not correct in urg- 
ing conscription, whether Mr. Redmond was not 
far-sighted in pledging Ireland, and whether 
Mrs. Pankhurst was not patriotic in subordinat- 
ing women workers to soldiers. I am only say- 
ing that they did not represent their constituency, 
and in taking the new tack they lost their follow- 
ing. What the democracy is learning to say to 
its leaders is, "Represent us or get out." I don't 
see in these manifestations of the popular wish 
256 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

any new idea, but I do see a swifter and more 
sensitive application of the principle of demo- 
cratic control. Leaders remain leaders only as 
long as they are channels for the collective will. 

Another change I feel in English life is an 
emotional change. It is the disappearance of the 
hysteria that was caused by suppression. I don't 
refer to the orgiastic elements in the English 
nature that are revealed at the corner public 
house and on Bank holiday. These are the peri- 
odic explosions of the natural man. It was in- 
evitable that England should have created the 
Salvation Army and indulged in Mafeking 
Night. The normal Englishman is a free, noisy 
creature, who talks by the hour, interrupts pub- 
lic meetings, and lives as a human being should. 
Any one who does n't know that has never spent 
evenings in country inns, and has never traveled 
in a third-class compartment. The English 
worker is a sociable person. Nor am I referring 
to the upper class, which has spread its govern- 
ors, explorers, and sportsmen over the earth, and 
whose women ride to hounds, drive ambulances 
under the guns, and speed up the suffrage cam- 
paign. 

»6T 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

I am speaking of the English middle class, the 
forlornest middle class known to me. France 
and America have nothing like it. The suppres- 
sion of emotional life in the women — the creation 
of the pose of "good form," the severely reticent 
lady, neither heard nor even seen in public — has 
resulted in a rather wide-spread hysteria in that 
one stratum of the community, the middle-class 
layer. These women are desirous to be true to 
type, to do nothing that is not correct, and the 
result has been a prim and regulated life, full of 
negations, with the instinctive impulses and de- 
sires of a free, creative life left out of the reckon- 
ing. Nature punishes this suppression with 
nervous maladies. One London specialist told 
me he knew of several hundred such cases. 

This hysteria was shown in manifestations 
of the miHtant suffrage movement. I am not 
speaking of the leaders. Mrs. Pankhurst is a 
very charming woman, of determined will and 
well-balanced mentality, who adopted a program 
of action because she believed she was forced to 
it by the demands of the situation. Mrs. "Gen- 
eral" Drummond is the most delightful humorist, 
with the exception of Chesterton, whom I have 
258 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

ever met. She is luminously sane. My wife and 
I spent three days with her at Havre, and she 
held us through the evenings till midnight with 
her reminiscences of carrying a hansom-cab into 
the House of Commons, floating in a tug down 
the Thames past Parliament, and addressing the 
statesmen on the Embankment, who had to sit 
and listen because they were chained to their 
afternoon tea. Another time she was in the gal- 
lery of a crowded public hall and, in trying to go 
out, became entangled in the pedals of the organ, 
and sent out wailing notes. Miss Kenney is a 
modest, earnest young woman of clear, idealistic 
purpose. This handful of leaders who manipu- 
lated the Women's Social and Political Union 
are expressing themselves. But the movement 
attracted an element in the middle class which is 
in spiritual bondage, and some of these showed 
signs of hysteria in their response. The bitter- 
ness of tone in the books of certain English 
women writers is another indication of suffer- 
ing. 

To all such victims of suppressed vitality, lead- 
ing to anxiety, melancholy, and hysteria, the war 
has come as a release, for it has given them excit- 
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ing occupation. They have entered industry, 
commerce, government employment. They have 
nursed soldiers, cooked at canteens, and become 
a part of the great communal life flowing past 
them. 

These minor changes of idea and attitude and 
emotional response are all a part of the great 
change which has come over England. Life is 
no longer a monopoly possession of the upper 
classes, of the male sex, of the mother country, of 
the Westminster Parhament, of the captains of 
industry. Life is not a matter to be postponed 
to the hereafter and the choir invisible. It is the 
product here and now of one's will and energy, 
fed by impulse, and shaped by thought. One- 
self is the person concerned, and the happiest so- 
ciety in which to feel at home is a democracy of 
equals. 

A BATCH OF PAPERS 

Instead of being ponderous and exhaustive, 
and writing this like a sociological report, I shall 
tell what I like and dishke about British journal- 
ism, and we shall get along faster than by the 
heavy-footed way. I like Chesterton's paper, 
260 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

"The New Witness," since G. K. C. has taken it 
over. Others that write his style annoy me, as 
an echo in the auditorium annoys an audience 
who want to hear the speaker himself. I like 
"The New Witness" because Gilbert K. Chester- 
ton seems to me the best thing England has pro- 
duced since Dickens. I like the things he be- 
lieves in, and I hate sociological experts and pro- 
hibitionists and Uhlan officers, which are the 
things he hates. I feel in him that a very honest 
man is speaking, so I am glad of his views even 
when I differ with him. He is a useful correc- 
tive on public opinion, too. He dislikes the ser- 
vile state, by which he means the coming orderly, 
regimented Utopia, scientifically managed by 
Sidney Webb. That is the kind of talk we need, 
because all of us in social work (and who is n't a 
social worker to-day?) are forever hunting and 
harrying the poor, itemizing their food-supply, 
shading off just the proportion of caloric differ- 
ence between starvation and under-nourishment. 
And when we catch the line where the poor sat- 
isfy us that they can pull through, we are going 
to impale them with a minimum wage. I like 
his impudence to Northcliffe, because Northcliffe 
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is a dangerous sort of man in a modern democ- 
racy. He is dangerous because he does so much 
good ; but I will get around to him in a moment. 
As a journalist Chesterton gets only about a 
quarter of himself into action. But even a quar- 
ter of Chesterton is good measm'e. He leaves 
out aU his overtones, the lilting verse and jolly 
stories and incomparable essays, those flashes of 
good criticism and exultation. He works very 
hard at his journalism. That is why he does n't 
do it so well as his careless things, which give him 
fun. But for all that there is ho other editorial 
page in England or the United States written 
with the snap, wit, and honest humanity of his 
paragraphs. I hope he won't blunt himself by 
overwork. It would be an international loss if 
that sane, jolly mind is bent to routine. Eng- 
land has need of him. There is something cosmic 
about English plans of reconstruction, something 
of the weary load of destiny about their imperial 
commonwealth. It is a pleasant thing to be able 
to remind ourselves that the same race that pro- 
duced Curzon and Milner and Carson, heavy 
men, with a sense of predestined seriousness, 
after all produced Chesterton. 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

I have to jump the Irish Sea in order to find 
anything so much in earnest and gay as the "New 
Witness" in these months of management by one 
who tells me that he is "the world's worst editor." 
I think the independent spirited little Irish week- 
lies are admirable. They sass the censor and the 
lord lieutenant and the Castle. I met some of 
the editors, poor men and honest, editing and 
writing papers in which they believe. They 
seemed to me worth all the sleek, timid 
New York crowd put together. They speak 
their heart out, then take the galley proof 
around to the censor, and he slashes out 
"seditious" paragraphs, and they publish about 
half their heartful. I have seen these carved-up 
galleys and the pleading, warning, threatening 
letters of the censor. These journalists are 
pretty much eveiything in their shop — editor and 
contributor and proof-reader and office boy — be- 
cause their papers are often one-man concerns. 
A man believes something hard, and being Irish, 
he has the knack of statement, so he publishes a 
paper. One of them told us he had a weekly 
circulation of 10,000; another had 6000. These 
weeklies have hterary quality. One of them, 
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"New Ireland," is stuffed full of good things by 
A. E., James Stephens, Katharine Tynan, and 
the rest of that gifted group. There is some- 
thing pathetic about the editors I am speaking 
of; I met several of them. I don't mean pitiable, 
because you don't pity men who are better than 
you are. But there seemed something hopeless 
about the success of their efforts within any span 
of time that would concern them at all. I sup- 
pose it is just an extension of the feeling that we 
have about anj^ clean, unrewarded effort in this 
present world of ours where men of the sort of 
these Irish editors, with fine hopes about human- 
ity in their heart, go lean and tired to their gi'ave. 
Some of them are already in prison, and more of 
them will be there before the Irish question is well 
settled. 

Coming back to England, one has to have "The 
Nation." It is much like our own "New Repub- 
lic." But what is a discovery in "The New Re- 
public" becomes a formula in "The Nation." 
"The New Republic" is cock-sure, omniscient, 
and "I 'm not arguing with you ; I 'm telling 
you," because its background is scanty, and it has 
the freshness of a virgin mind. "The Nation" is 
264 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

all background, and so is a little weary. It has 
the slightly fatigued mind of one who has lived 
a hfetime with the noble aspirations of our better- 
class radicals, and needs a change, but won't take 
it. I have read "The Nation" since 1908, and I 
never felt this ennui so much as during these war 
months. Like many other radicals, it was 
caught between the Zeppelins and the submarines 
without a program. It had nothing to say, and 
said it. Latterly it has had a rebirth. Bertrand 
Russell published a fascinating book a few 
months ago, called "Why Men Fight." I have 
been watching that book seep out through 
the pores of "The Nation" ever since. "The 
Nation" makes me tired because its sincerity 
is stale; but, for all that, it is one of the best 
weeklies in England, and it comes closer to 
interpreting the vital thought of England, the 
currents of tendency, than any paper known to 
me. Only I wish it were not so languid in tell- 
ing about vital thought. It is of course well writ- 
ten, a quality it shares with forty other papers. 
That gift of a good working style is rather wide- 
spread. It comes of having a literary tradition 
and a well-read university crowd. There must 
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be two or three hundred men in England with a 
clear and satisfactory technic. 

Speaking of the "New Republic," Leo Maxse 
of "The National Review" and Massingham of 
"The Nation" unite in quoting from it. Men 
like Lord Milner "see" it. Professor Graham 
Wallas said to me: "Walter Lippmann has a 
mind with an edge. He may well develop into 
a great democratic leader." 

I was taught at Yale to regard "The Athe- 
nasum" as the authoritative paper of the English 
language in literary criticism, and having built 
that into my formative years, I can no more shake 
the belief than I can free myself of the idea that 
we are the home of the brave and the free. But 
I shall have to let it go at that, because I often 
escape from it to the clever and breezy opening 
paragraphs of "The Saturday Review." They 
state the news of the week in one hundred word 
summaries, which are equally charming on the 
death of a Greek professor and the rotten radi- 
cahsm of modern thought. I like "The Satur- 
day Review," "The National Review," and "The 
Morning Post" for an impotent hate which they 
have in common. I love to watch what psycho- 
266 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

analysts tenii a "complex" uncoil itself periodi- 
cally, and writhe around in the public eye. Each 
of them has a nest of complexes, and all have the 
same complexes. They hate Americans, Ger- 
mans, labor, radicalism, and the Irish with a fine, 
fresh enthusiasm, which results in lively writing. 
In this bad modern world they have lost their 
public, and they see their future trailed out be- 
hind them like a foamy wake, but they go into 
dissolution with a zest. The war has partly 
spoiled their pleasure, because German misdeeds 
gave them a legitimate and a popular object of 
attack, and for a time they had to endure a cer- 
tain measure of public favor, as men who had 
told you so. But as the Irish question ap- 
proaches settlement, as labor takes control of a 
new province every month, and as radicalism 
honeycombs the British commonwealth, thej'^ are 
regaining their ancient role of Csissandra. 

To talk of English weekly journalism and 
omit Horatio Bottomley and his "John Bull" 
would be as unfortunate as dropping George 
Cohan and Billy Sunday from a list of leaders 
of American thought. Very simply Bottomley 
said recently : 

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I speak as the editor of a journal which enjoys a 
circulation and wields an influence unique in newspaper 
history; and as one who, for good or evil, has gained 
the ear and the confidence of a sufficient section of the 
British public to make or unmake Ministers. 

Stated with true British restraint, that is a 
minimum appraisal of the place Bottomley holds 
in public esteem. In the same issue Lloyd- 
George learns he is not to be broken at the first 
kick-off. "So long as he does this — but not a 
day longer — ^he may rely, for what it may be 
worth, upon my unqualified and disinterested 
support." I heard a British colonel say the 
other day that Bottomley should have been in the 
cabinet. He writes a picture-post-card style, 
like that of Arthur Brisbane, which is spotted 
with battle-cries and catch-phrases such as "a 
business Government," "Germany's Death-rat- 
tle." He is really funny in a way that "Punch" 
would like to be. He has a genuine pity for the 
lot of the poor, and I think in that, and not in 
his raw conceit and vulgarity and barrenness of 
ideas, lies the secret of his hold on a portion of 
the people. When it comes to the downright 
spade-work of reconstruction, where bright 
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SOCIAL STUDIES 

phrases are not a substitute for hard thinking, I 
foresee a sharp tussle for mastery between the 
Bottomley type of mind and the real leaders of 
England. Surely the real leaders are men like 
Seebohm Rowntree, Zimmern, Lionel Curtis, 
and Prothero, who put fundamental brain-work 
on the industrial and imperial problems. Mean- 
while I read "John Bull," and so does England. 
There is no wi*eneh in passing from Bottomley 
to Lord Northcliffe. Both are "practical men," 
who want things done now. Northcliffe is a big, 
genial man, carrying a sense of immediate power. 
He suggested to me a cross between a district 
leader and a captain of industry. He will do any- 
thing for you personally, like a Tammany boss. 
It gives him a sense of his own power, and it ex- 
presses a genuine human liking in his make-up. 
He cuts across lots to get into action. He writes 
well, talks well, and has a hard horse sense 
that has served England in the present crisis. 
Whether he will continue to be of value will de- 
pend on his ability to broaden his vision of the 
industrial struggle. He has the arrogance of 
men who make swift decisions, and who are in the 
position to carry them out. He has a sharpened 
269 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

sense of reality, but it is a materialistic sense. 
Whether he will help the new world after the war 
is a question that is troubling all who have 
watched his astonishing career and realize his 
force. There is a danger of England too hastily 
reshaping its ideals. Because it has been slow 
and unorganized it is turning to American and 
Prussian methods. But it will be a loss if it lets 
in the whole materialistic philosophy of results, 
success, and efficency. And just here is the 
damage of a man like Northcliife, because he is 
a sort of Prussian superman, w^ho is death on 
slackness, but blind to any meaning that can't be 
caught inside of three dimensions. There was a 
restraint in English journalism before his time. 
I noticed the other day that he pubhshed in his 
"Daily Mail" a cartoon of Raemaekers, and used 
an underline which made it seem that Raemaek- 
ers had drawn his picture in order to throw scorn 
on Viscount Grey. Actually the caption had 
been faked in the office to serve the political ends 
of the paper. That is dirty journahsm, as dirty 
as America's Yellow Press. I am not trying to 
offer wise conclusions in this chapter. I am only 
recording impressions after many years of daily 
270 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

reading in the English press. So I leave North- 
cliffe with no formulated opinion. I see valuable 
service in his hard hitting, but I distrust some- 
thing in the man which I feel to be ruthless and 
unmoral. It seems to me un-English, or else I 
am all wrong about the temperateness and kindli- 
ness of English character. 

"The Manchester Guardian" is one of the 
best newspapers in England. To praise its edi- 
torials, its dramatic reviews, its balance of news, 
its judicial, and yet spirited, attitude to custom 
and change, is what President Hadley tersely 
calls "a work of supererogation." It is as good 
as an amalgam of "The Springfield Republican," 
"The Kansas City Star," and "The Dallas 
News." 

"The Westminster Gazette" has a delightful 
literary department where they turn English 
verses into decasyllabic Latin, develop the ca- 
pabilities of words whose initial letter is z, and 
write tiny essays on "How to Enter an Omnibus." 

A. G. Gardiner writes political studies and 
character sketches in his "Daily News" that re- 
mind an American of Colonel Watterson's best 
work. 

271 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

I have grown very weary of J. L. Garvin in 
the Sunday "Observer." He has felt the neces- 
sity of "putting a punch" into it every week till he 
writes portentously of "tanks," which should be 
left for Chesterton, and of the map of Europe, 
which is the vested interest of Hilaire Belloc. 

The best writers of Great Britain sprinkle 
themselves about on the editorial pages in a way 
that makes the breakfast paper a voyage of dis- 
covery. The "New Statesman," the "New 
Age," and the "Cambridge Magazine," with its 
amazing digest of foreign opinion, are quite ir- 
replaceable because no other periodicals fulfill 
their function. I used to read the "Spectator," 
till Strachey's militancy in several fields grew 
wearisome. 

The individualistic penny weeklies and month- 
lies are unfailingly bright. It seems strange to 
me that we have nothing of the sort in America. 
The suffrage papers; the one-man affairs, like 
George Lansburj^'s "Herald" and Sorollea's 
"Everyman"; "The British Weekly," with its ex- 
cellent literary letter by Robertson NicoU: "The 
Christian Commonwealth," with its analysis of 
labor conditions and of advanced Nonconformist 
272 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

thought — all combine to give the impression of a 
self-conscious public opinion fed and renewed hj 
the free play of the individualistic mind. 

Of the heavier reviews, "The Fortnightty," 
"Nineteenth Century" and "The Contemporary" 
are valuable for obtaining that sweep of interna- 
tional affairs of which we in America catch 
hardly a glimpse in our popular magazines. 

But the best of the reviews is "The Round 
Table." Men like Lionel Curtis Kerr and 
A. E. Zimmern are working here at the prin- 
ciples of reconstruction for industry and the 
empire. It is solid, close- wrought work, wres- 
thng at the problems of the modern world with 
an absence of theory and rhetoric. No other 
single publication has had the influence of "The 
Round Table" in directing British public opinion. 
"The Round Table" helped to prepare the ground 
for the changes which came through with the war. 
They and the Fabian group and the Workers' 
Educational Association and the workers them- 
selves have between them sprung the most dra- 
matic revolution in one hundred years, and it is 
still only in its faint beginnings. 

Somebody is going to tell me that my list is n't 
273 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

complete, and that I have omitted the most 
weighty, the most significant paper on the island. 
But this is not a catalogue, and it is not a guide to 
self-help. It is merely the record of the likes of 
one man who reads for pleasure. So let them 
bring forward their "Chamber's," "Hibbert 
Journal," "Quarterly Review," and "The Edin- 
burgh," "Truth," "Cornhill," and "The New 
Age." 

TREE SPEECH 

One of our most prominent American social 
workers retm'ned home the other day from a 
foreign tour. She was quoted as saying that she 
had found liberty suppressed everywhere. A mo- 
ment later in the interview it appeared that her 
experience in England consisted in cutting across 
the island and jumping aboard her boat at Liver- 
pool. That lets her out. If she had remained 
in England she would have found that liberty is a 
lively possession there just now. I have never 
before seen the "subject" act with so much 
initiative and I have never heard him express 
himself so vigorously. Mr. Bertrand Russell 
receives an excellent free advertisement from 
274 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

the War Office for his views, and proceeds 
to state them in one of the best books writ- 
ten in recent years, "Why Men Fight." The 
book is widely advertised and favorably reviewed. 
In a time of incalculable strain half a dozen 
conscientious objectors are dealt with unjustly 
and shamefully while some thousands are dealt 
with honorably. And conscientious objectors 
are only two per cent, of the total number 
of claimants for exemption. These others are 
in "reserved trades," they are the "sole sup- 
port" of a family, they have built up an indi- 
vidual business. And of all these cases, only 
four per cent, of the decisions have been appealed 
against. Conscientious objectors would never 
have been heard from if Parliament had not 
created their status. There are no conscientious 
objectors in Germany; there is the shooting- 
squad. It is only in a free country that liberty 
can "raise a rough house." England is a free 
country. There are plenty of criticisms that lie 
against her for mental sloth, for mistaken foreign 
policy, for unconscious and deep pride ; but a man 
is still free to carry out his policy and speak his 
mind. The perfect proof is this: in the year 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

1915 she had 698 labor strikes. At once the 
vigilant critic of England will say, "The laboring 
man is not patriotic." Let me first point out 
that this is an exactly opposite charge from the 
charge that he has lost his personal liberty. 
Secondly, it is untrue. He is patriotic, but he 
feels no loyalty toward the profit-makers. The 
striking miners were accused of holding up coal 
from the navy and endangering the battle-ship 
fleet. But they showed figures to a friend of 
mine which proved the exact point to which they 
could proceed with their strike without lessening 
the source of supply for the navy. The worker 
is enough of a man to die for his country or work 
for it till he drops; but he does not care to be 
exploited by profiteers under the glib phrases of 
national service. The labor situation to-day is 
the proof that England is free. 

But England has no publicity sense. She ad- 
vertises all her blundeis and crimes, and goes 
silent when she does well. The failure of Loos is 
publicly proclaimed. The Admiralty competes 
with the War Office in giving bad impressions of 
great things done. England allows freedom of 
speech in Hyde Park, in "The Herald," "Com- 
216 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

mon Sense," "The Labor Leader," "The Na- 
tion," "Forward." She allows it to Ramsay 
MacDonald, Philip Snowden, Ponsonby, Trevel- 
yan, Lowes Dickinson, Lansbury, Sylvia Pank- 
hurst, and a hundred other voices and organs that 
continue the great tradition of personal liberty. 
But when she restricts one man from the muni- 
tions areas she uses a megaphone to tell the world 
that liberalism is dead. Wherever the War Office 
has stepped in and encroached on the liberty of 
the subject and the claims of private property, the 
civil courts have upheld the rights of the person 
against military necessity. A series of decisions 
in the last two years proves this. But all that 
England speaks of is the Defense of the Realm 
Act, as if a band of grim officers were yanking 
struggling civilians into penal servitude. When 
England has a choice offering that would win 
praise and sympathy, she puts a veil of silence 
between the attraction and the neutral public. 
To any one that understands England this is 
agreeable, because it is all a part of her muddling 
greatness. "Hands off her ancient liberties," 
and the hands are still off. But to an outsider 
the din of perennial, lively protest seems like the 
277 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

wail of lost souls, a race sold to slavery. It has 
given a wrong impression to America, where it 
is not yet fully realized that the wealth of Eng- 
land and the industrial work of England are the 
sources of strength for the Allied cause, and that 
the Somme offensive is only the gentle prelude 
to the music that will tune up in Picardy this 
spring. And yet the Somme offensive sucked up 
the German forces from both fronts, let Italy 
and Russia smash ahead, and enabled France to 
shake the army corps from Verdmi. The big 
guns and the shells of England's foiu* thousand 
seven hundred controlled shops are the decisive 
factors of this war. A set of rather cocky 
German officers were led recently through the 
square miles of preparedness that lie back of 
the English hues. Their expression altered as 
the massed, detailed abimdance of the blow that 
gathers there was unfolded before their trained 
eyes. Home was never Hke this. 

Now, while it is a pity to puzzle us who are 
Americans, there is no serious harm in it. But 
the real demerit of putting the worst foot for- 
ward is that it misleads the enemy into thinking 
there is n't a big kick coming from the best foot 
278 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

in the background. I am a peace-loving man, 
and in the interests of the German peasant and 
clerk I \\'ish that Germany could have a picture of 
the English effort which is only in the first arc 
of its ascending cur^ e. The Gk)vernment would 
then withdraw its troops on all fronts, cede Al- 
sace-Lorraine, sign indemnities, and thank their 
tribal deity for the easy terms of peace. The 
whole English effort is the spectacle of a democ- 
racy on the march. It is accompanied by grum- 
bles and mistakes, and is as haphazard an affair 
as our first two years of Civil War; but back 
of the wasted motion is an inexhaustible 
strength. 

The key of the whole performance is set by the 
British army and na\y. Xo one has caught the 
essential note of the British fighting men. 3Ir. 
Kipling has a harsh and brutal way of rendering 
the affair. Because he is a man of genius, he 
creates his effect, he leaves his impression; but his 
is not an interpretation of the spirit of these men. 
^Ir. Xoyes has cast the drama on sea and land 
in an heroic Elizabethan key, but a modern 
democracy does not play up to his setting. It 
goes about things in its own way, tight-lipped in 
279 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

suffering, and good-humored in bad weather. 
The War Office ought to turn some one loose 
among the milhon in Picardy who would really 
capture the extraordinary ensemble. O. Henry 
would have been the man for this job. 

There has long been a slang phrase for a man 
who was going out for an evening of pleasure in 
the West End of London. When he wished to 
say that he was planning a jolly supper party and 
an evening at a music hall, he summed it up by 
saying he was "going west." The men at the 
front who tell of the death of a comrade say, "He 
has gone west." 

The British Tommy throws a lugubrious exag- 
geration of shrapnel and flies and trench-mud 
into his songs, fills his chorus with expressions of 
a desire to go home, and sticks it at the Somme. 
As G. K. Chesterton said to me : 

"The English people have never found their 
full expression in religion or poetry. It is in 
humor where the English nature comes through." 

The popular Tommy attitude toward trench- 
life is that of "grousing," and no one has inter- 
preted this so well as one of the men at the front. 
Captain Bruce Bairnsfather. He gives no mock 
280 



I 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

heroics about the gloiy of sacrifice. His sketches 
are a humorously disgusted record of water 
underfoot, rain overhead, barbed wire, sand-bags, 
and Bully beef. I doubt if any other nation in 
the moment of supreme strain would circulate his 
pamphlets by the hundred thousand as good 
recruiting material. 

But England knows that if she quenched free 
speech she ^vould lose the war. She would lose 
the war because she would be destroying the 
spirit of her men, which escapes the mud and scum 
of things by spattering them back with a jest. 

Free speech is a fundamental requirement of 
English nature. The Englishman must speak 
his mind openly, register his "kick" against dis- 
comforts, and be "agin' the Government." 
With that clearance he settles down to steady 
work. No one knows what would happen if the 
nation were thoroughly muzzled. The attempt 
has never before been made. It has been made 
only in part in this war. 

THE RIGHT OF ASYLUM 

A couple of critics of these chapters on social 
change have said that I am too buoyant in render- 
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ing a painful process. The reconstruction is not 
going to be as easy as all that, they say. Un- 
skilled labor is going to have the fight of its life. 
Women face a bitter two or tlii'ee years. The 
forces of reaction have been strengthened by 
three years of militarism. The trade-unions 
have been shot to pieces by the concessions they 
have made under the munitions acts. The gains 
which cost them three generations to achieve have 
all been swept away and will never be restored. 
A large portion of the press has been nothing but 
the official organ for doctored news. Many 
hundreds of men are in jail because "Christianity 
has become punishable by ten years' penal serv- 
itude under the Military Service Act" (which is 
a pungent reference to conscientious objectors). 
I have given a wrong impression if the reader 
thinks that the principle of democratic control is 
being established without a severe fight; but the 
point is that it is being established. When one 
has only a short time and limited space at dis- 
posal, it is hard to render a social change without 
either writing wordy surface generalizations or 
else getting messed up with details. Perhaps the 
simplest way of making clear that it has cost 
S82 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

suffering to win this freedom, and yet that the 
victory is being won, is to consider one apphca- 
tion of democratic control in these years of stress. 

I choose the "right of asylum" to prove my 
point that England still champions freedom. It 
is a fair choice, because the right of asylum 
rocked in the balance and nearly went under. It 
was violently assailed by the Scotland Yard 
police and the Government itself, but the Eng- 
lish people ralhed and saved it. The hounding 
of Russian political refugees in London, which 
has gone on under cover of "military necessity," 
probably injured the English cause more severely 
in America in the early days than any other 
official blunder of the war. The news was 
spread broadcast among our social workers. 

For centuries England has given her hos- 
pitality to exiles from other lands who had fled 
from tyranny. To her in time of persecution 
have come the Huguenots, Louis Kossuth, Maz- 
zini, Karl Marx, Engels, Bakunin, Kropotkm, 
French Communards, and now for many years 
Russian refugees. As one of the peers in the 
House of Lords said: 

It has been our boast for centuries that this coun- 
^83 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

try is a hospitable refuge for those who flee from other 
lands. At the time of the Massacre of St. Bartholo- 
mew in 1572 and of the Revocation of the Edict of 
Nantes in 1685, we were the refuge for the Huguenots. 
Victor Hugo came to Jersey to escape from the des- 
potism of Napoleon III. Those who have sought a 
refuge here have been subject to the common law, 
answerable for their actions, but not for their opinions. 

Under cover of the war the Scotland Yard 
police began to harass the Russian refugees in 
London. They attacked the Russian Seamen's 
Union. The Russian Seamen's Union exists to 
fight the conditions under which the Russian 
sailors work. It exposed "the beating of the 
men, their confinement in cages, their being put 
in chains, deprived of food, heavy fines, flogging." 
It concerned itself with the conditions of the 
ships and the low wages. By the Russian com- 
bination law the right to organize was denied to 
Russian seamen, so their union had to locate its 
center of activity in a foreign country, and chose 
Belgium. It was driven out from Antwerp in 
October of 1914 by the advance of the German 
army. It crossed to London. On December 
20, 1915, the pohce of Scotland Yard raided the 
office of the union, and seized the documents, in- 
284 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

eluding a list of persons in Russia with whom the 
union corresponded. At the same time the home 
of Dimitri Anitchkin, secretary of the union, was 
raided, and his manuscripts and letters for ten 
years back were confiscated. So heavy and far- 
reaching was the hand of authority that when the 
union appealed to the National Sailors and Fire- 
men's Union of England, the general secretary, 
E. Catheiy, wrote: 

You must not forget you are a foreigner in a for- 
eign country, although you belong to one of our allies ; 
but we have got to look after the interest of our coun- 
try at present, and do not want any unpleasantness at 
the present time. Under the Defense of the Realm Act 
we can be called before the authorities for doing things 
we can do with freedom in normal times. 

A little group of English people saw that the 
ancient right of asylum was about to be abolished. 
So the}^ made their appeal to the British trade- 
unions. In "The Railway Review," "The York- 
shire Factoiy Times," "The Amalgamated So- 
ciety of Engineers Journal," and "The Cotton 
Factory Times" they saw to it that articles of 
protest appeared. 

But the police were determined that free 
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speech should not prevail. A labor conference 
was to be held in London on January 6, 1916, 
and a leaflet had been prepared, setting out the 
facts of the attack on the Russian refugees, and 
called an "Open Letter to Trade Unionists." 
Accordingly, on January 5, the police raided the 
headquarters of the "Russian Political Prisoners' 
and Exiles' Rehef Committee," at 96 Lexham 
Gardens, Kensington, London. They seized 
one thousand copies of a financial report, con- 
taining the seditious information that the Wool- 
wich trades council had given six pounds to the 
Russian committee, that the National Union of 
Railwaymen of Bletchley had given fourteen 
shillings, that the Independent Labor party of 
Tantobie had contributed eleven shillings and 
eightpence. Exhilarated by their success, the 
police proceeded to commandeer the reprints in 
leaflet form of the articles that had appeared in 
"The Railway Review," "The Yorkshire Fac- 
tory Times," and "The Amalgamated Society of 
Engineers Journal." Nor did they overlook a 
thousand copies of the "Open Letter to Trade 
Unionists," which were to have been distributed 
on the next day. 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

The home secretary, Mr. Herbert Samuel, said 
to the House of Conmions on July 11, 1916: 

"Russians of military age setthng in this coun- 
try will, unless they prefer to return for military 
service in Russia, be required to enlist in the 
British army. The details of the scheme are now 
being worked out." 

They were. The police set to work illegally 
and without due authority and said to the Rus- 
sian refugees : 

"You have to go back to Russia. Here is your 
ticket; you are to be at Euston Station on such 
and such a day." 

Charles Sarno had come from Russia three 
years previously. An order was served upon 
him; he was to be deported to Russia. The 
order was challenged. When it came to argu- 
ment the representatives of the crown abandoned 
the case. Immediately on leaving the court, 
Sarno was again arrested, and told that he 
was to be put on board a ship bound for Rus- 
sia. 

It was announced in the House of Lords that 
no invitation or request whatever had come from 
the Russian Government for England to take 
S8T. 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

this action. It was a purely spontaneous and 
gratuitous act on the pai't of the British Home 
Office. The home secretary stated it was quite 
false that he had ever ordered any man to go to 
Russia, and he said that there would be no de- 
portations. Finally, Lord Sheffield, on July 27, 
1916, made a well-reasoned speech to the House 
of Lords in which he defended the right of 
asylum, lashed the Government and the police, 
and etched the eminent Jewish home secretary, 
Mr. Herbert Samuel, in unforgettable terms. 
He said : 

"If I were a Jew or had a drop of Jewish blood 
in my veins, I would sooner cut my hand off than 
say to one of these men, 'If you do not enlist in 
the British army, you, being a Polish Jew, shall 
go back, not where you like, to any part of the 
world, but to Poland or to Russia.' " 

Earl Russell stood side by side with Lord 
Sheffield in defying the Government poHcy, and 
once again, as on more occasions than one in 
British history, the lords saved the liberty of the 
individual men from the encroachments of the 
Government and the indifference of the Com- 
mons. The English people had no wish, of 
288 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

course, for this tyranny. They had no knowl- 
edge of it. Graham Wallas has warned us 
against the modern conception of the "Psychology 
of the Crowd." He has warned us against seeing 
j)opulations as individually thoughtful and tem- 
perate and collectively blind and ferocious. It 
is the fallacy of our generation to believe that 
whole peoples go insane in a wild swirl, and do 
this thing and wish that thing by imitation and 
suggestion and sympathy. Of course political 
movements are in fact carried out "by men con- 
scious and thoughtful, though necessarily ill in- 
formed,'* and these movements seem to the slack 
observer, fed on our popular sociologists, "to be 
due to the blind and unconscious impulses of 
masses 'incapable both of reflection and reason- 
ing.' " It is so with the right of asylum and the 
suppression of the Russians. The English peo- 
ple have not gone war-mad. They have not 
risen up to overthrow the principles of freedom 
and justice for which they have in the main long 
contended. 

But under cover of the war, when the attention 
of millions of the inhabitants was strained on 
another matter, a little group of militarists, pol- 
289 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

iticians, and policemen have tried to carry out a 
reactionary program. It is familiar to all stu- 
dents of the institution of police that it is the 
tendency of their practice at times of strain to 
"take away a man's character by administrative 
decree on secret police information." It is not 
that they fail to act honestly on the best of their 
"information and belief"; it is that the secret and 
one-sided examination, followed by peremptory 
action, is not a perfect method for establishing 
truth. "Spy," "crook," "anarchist," and "per- 
vert" are words for them that do duty in place of 
public legal procedure. 

The attempts to harass Russian refugees have 
been fewer and feebler since Lord Sheffield spoke. 
In November the British authorities removed 
four Russians from a Danish ship, but their case 
was tried in open court. And in a case tried on 
the same day, January 11 of this year, concern- 
ing a French political refugee, the lord chief- 
justice laid down the British law for all such 
cases, and restored the ancient tradition of the 
nation. He said: 

"Parliament had not given the home secretary 
power to make an order which would forcibly 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

remove a man from this country to another 
country to which he did not wish to go." 

Enghsh justice refused to be muzzled by con- 
scription, munitions acts, militaiy service acts, 
and the Defense of the Reahn Act. So ended 
the second chapter of this record. Chapter one 
showed certain Enghsh authorities as stupid ps 
the pohce of Chicago and New York during 
"anarchist" flurries. Chapter two revealed the 
English people as alert in the defense of freedom 
as in the days before the war. The right of 
asylum had been reaffirmed. 

Then came chapter three, with the entrance 
of the new British Government. The new Gov- 
ernment represents the triumph of the executive 
over the Parliamentary legislative division of 
authority. Mr. Bonar Law announced on Feb- 
ruary 27 to the House of Commons that Russians 
in England must enlist as British soldiers or be 
deported to Russia. On the same day at the 
Old- Street Police Court the Magistrate said to 
David Cohen, a Russian: 

We do not want you here if you are not going to do 
your duty. If you succeed in proving that you are of 
291 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

Russian nationality, I shall do my best to get you sent 
back. 



On March 7, I attended a debate in the House 
of Lords, where Lord Sheffield pointed out that 
the home of an Englishwoman had been raided 
while she was held in prison with no charge made 
against her, and in her absence papers were con- 
fiscated. These papers were pamphlets in de- 
fense of the right of asylum. Lord Sheffield 
then cited the case of a Russian refugee in Lon- 
don who wished to return to the United States, 
where he had taken out his first naturalization 
papers. The letter of the Home Office was pro- 
duced in evidence, and this letter refused the Rus- 
sian's request. 

The Secretary of State for War, the Earl of 
Derby, replied for the Government. He said 
that one of the seized pamphlets, entitled "The 
Right of Asjdum," was of such a character as to 
make it unfit for circulation at this time. Very 
skilfully he created an "atmosphere" about that 
pamphlet, so that the listener felt that it was 
treasonable and seditious. But I possess a copy 
of that pamphlet, and it is not unfit for circula- 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

tion in a free country. It is an appeal by Lon- 
don Russians not to be sent back. It is simply 
that. 

The "noble Earl" went on to refer to one of 
the societies of Russians as suspicious, and there- 
fore a fair field for official investigation. lie 
forgot that he was defending an official policy 
which would place those suspicious persons in the 
army. 

The Lord Chancellor spoke next. Lord Fin- 
lay, the present Lord Chancellor, is always worth 
hearing, because he is naive. It was he who, in 
a debate on admitting women as solicitors, said: 

The question is: What is the proper sphere of 
women? I do not believe that the active practice of a 
profession is compatible with the proper work of women 
as mothers and in attending to their families. I regret 
that there are many women who do not have an oppor- 
tunity of marriage in this country. Probably in time 
opportunities will be found for them in other parts of 
the Empire where they can become the mothers of 
mighty nations. 

In the present debate on the right of Asylum, 
he was equally delightful when he said that the 
293 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

Russian political refugees owed a duty to their 
nation, Russia. 

Lord Sheffield was snowed under by these 
vigorous reactionaries, and the old man hobbled 
away on two canes. But for aU that, he had 
made it clear that an ancient right was being re- 
moved by executive decree, instead of by con- 
stitutional methods. If the British people wish 
to abolish the right of asylum, they should be per- 
mitted to do so by Act of Parliament. 

No nation, with all its young men in sthe field, 
will tolerate the presence of non-combatant ahens, 
filling the jobs vacated by the citizen army. The 
Mayor of Bethnal Green said recently. 

Men have to sacrifice their little businesses or their 
small factories to serve at the front, and neighbors of 
foreign parentage step into their places and reap the 
reward. 

Two other mayors of East London, represen- 
tatives of the borough councils, local tribunals, 
and of the London County Council, supported his 
statement and passed a resolution calling on 
Parliament to remedy the evil. The alien must 
be willing to defend the nation in which he makes 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

his residence or else leave for some other land 
not under war-pressure. But he should receive 
the right to select his destination. To force him 
to return to a country which would imprison him, 
is as unjust as it is for him to claim protection in 
a countiy which he is unwilling to defend. 

PUBLIC OPINION 

England would have been one more quiet, 
comfortable power of the second rank but for its 
northern and western counties. Its recent his- 
toiy would have been the history of Holland if 
it had not been for the storehouse of coal and iron 
in the industrial provinces. It was out of them, 
and out of the people bred there, that she has 
derived her vast strength in meeting the new 
world created by the industrial revolution that 
came in one century ago on the invention of 
machinery. Those northern and western parts 
of Great Britain have won the fight of democ- 
rac}^ and established the principle of democratic 
control. What we used to mean by England 
was southern England. It was Oxford, Cam- 
bridge, and London. The genius and the vital- 
ity of the kingdom were gathered there, and the 
295 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

radiations went out from those centers to make 
the impress of what the world knew as EngUsh 
influence. 

Imperceptibly the change has come. The 
governing class has ceased to govern. The type 
of Englishman who was born to rule is left with- 
out a job. Power and virtue have departed 
from the old order. The Oxford and Cambridge 
hierarchy exist in a vacuum. Patriarchal Eng- 
land, reared in the humanities, impervious to 
modem ideas, indifferent to alien points of view, 
unconsciously arrogant, heavily stupid, kindly, 
cultivated, and honorable, was unfitted to the 
modern world of quick thinking, swift action, 
sympathetic cooperation. It is dying in our 
sight. In the first weeks of war the shell of that 
little England collapsed ; the organism itself had 
long since weakened. In its place has arisen a 
far more formidable, far more democratic state, 
the British commonwealth. 

As fast as power shifts a psychological change 
takes place. The English nature and character 
are visibly altering. A swifter order of men are 
in control. The men of power show Celtic char- 
acteristics. Under the touch of the new influ- 
296 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

ence, which is industrial and democratic, there 
is a brightening and quickening. The old inartic- 
ulateness passes. The race grows talkative. It 
responds to excitement. 

Public opinion, as it reverberates in London, is 
no longer the public opinion of Great Britain. 
It is not the public opinion of the Cornwall 
miners, of the South Wales miners, of the indus- 
trial centers of Liverpool, Birmingham, Man- 
chester, and Glasgow. It is not the public 
opinion of Montreal, and Sydney. London and 
the south of England do not speak for the com- 
monwealth. "The Manchester Guardian" un- 
derstands the sentiment of Glasgow and Mont- 
real, but the London "Morning Post" does 
not. 

When Lloyd-George struck out his brilliant 
suggestion for Ireland — a suggestion which will 
bring the solution of a question seven hundred 
years old — he spoke the requiem of the England 
known to us in memoirs, novels, and letters; the 
England of our college literary course, of the his- 
toric tradition, the caste system, the landed gen- 
try, the noble lady, the faithful sei-vitor, the hack- 
ney coachman, the genial vicar, and the Oxford 
297 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

don. He proposed that the matter of Ireland be 
handed over to the imperial conference, the con- 
gress of the five democracies. England's time 
had gone. She could n't solve the ancient wrong, 
but the new conmionwealth could solve it. Take 
it away from the tired kingdom, and give it to 
the young democracy. Government is no longer 
an affair of historic tradition. It is a very trou- 
blesome matter of digging out the facts, and ap- 
plying them to brand-new and rapidly changing 
conditions. It requires qualities of swift decision 
and execution. Industrial working-class Eng- 
land takes over the Government, assumes control 
of life, and side by side with radical Scotland and 
Wales and Austraha and Canada creates the new 
state. With the passing of Little England, the 
"literarj-" Englislmian whom we have kno^sTi 
passes, the courtly and simple nobleman, the 
charming Htterateur, the "scholar and gentle- 
man," and there comes in his stead a democratic 
person, open to ideas, wiUing to learn, and ver^^ 
willing to work out in partnership the problems 
of democratic control. 

There are clever men who are attempting to 
capture this newer England and to manipulate 
298 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

its public opinion. They discern certain of the 
creative elements in the change, organization, 
efficiency, business methods, government by ex- 
perts. Two such men are Horatio Bottomley and 
Lord Northcliffe. Thi'ough "John Bull," "The 
Times," "The Daily Mail," and other publications 
they wield a wide influence. Bottomley and 
Northcliffe are of the familiar iyipe of American 
company promoter. They are a mixture of the 
politician and the financier. They have a tough 
masculine geniality, a shrewd common sense, and 
what is called "an understanding of human 
nature," which means a knack of playing on the 
coarser impulses and motives of the democracy. 
Essentially they are bad leaders, because they 
don't believe in the best qualities of the masses 
of men whom they are leading. They see that 
average human nature is easily flattered, is loaded 
to the gimwale with prejudices, and that it can 
be manipulated by phrases promising action. 
Excitement, change, the sense of "something 
doing," are pleasurable to the average man. A 
newspaper progi'am which "makes and unmakes" 
ministers, creates heroes and villains, wrecks and 
reconstructs, gives a continuous performance of 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

moving pictures to its readers. In the flicker of 
the fihn ideas and true pohtical policy lose their 
sovereignty. By making use of the new forces of 
democracy, such men as the modern popular 
journalists may have it in their power a little to 
misdirect them. This failure of sane pubHc 
opinion to register itself is almost inevitable in a 
society where the millionaire proprietor is able to 
conduct a chain of newspapers which reflect his 
own mind, and which misrepresent his readers in 
certain matters by giving them what they want 
in the general news of the world, in pictures, and 
admirable special articles, and in hammering 
through a program of reconstruction, much of 
which is sound and responsive to the needs of the 
community. 

I am trying to untangle what seems to me the 
silent and real opinion of the nation from the 
voices that fill the air. Any one would be sin- 
gularly inept who pretended to interpret with 
any finality the public opinion of a people. 
What I give is merely the product of contacts 
with a few thousand British. The experience is 
all necessarily incomplete and superficial. This 
is offered merely as what I have seen and heard. 
300 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

It is a collection of little fragments of public 
opinion. 

The stuff talked in certain London centers is 
misleading and mischievous and sometimes wil- 
fully malicious. It is the bitter cry of persons 
who have lost their influence. There are little 
groups of elderly men and women in London who 
inflame themselves with hate of the German 
people. They speak of them as a nation of 
beasts, outside the human race. This is very 
um-epresentative of English public opinion, 
which has made the clear distinction in its mind 
between the doped, duped German people and 
the band of predatory assassins who are in con- 
trol of them. 

Again, on Ireland, I can quote an English 
officer, whom I heard say on his return from 
Dublin: 

"Remove the Nationalist politicians from 
Westminster. Suppress the Irish newspapers. 
Then give them conscription. They will yield." 

He and "The Morning Post" represent that 

minute fraction of "die hards" who feel the tide 

floating them down the beach and tiy to dig their 

heels into the sand. The will of the British 

301 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

people is for a settlement of the Irish question. 
There is no hatred of Ireland among the masses 
of the community. The desire of the average 
Englishman is to be let alone and to let other 
people alone. 

It is always necessary to find out whether a 
statement of opinion represents the mass con- 
sciousness or whether it is spoken from personal 
bitterness and class interest. I can quote Leo 
Maxse, who writes in his "National Review," 
"There is nothing in common between the stand- 
point of the civilized part of Europe and the 
United States." But I am quoting a shrill and 
lonely voice. The mass of people in England 
are as unaware of America as the middle West is 
unaware of England. Thej^ are not scornful or 
antagonistic. They are indifferent with the large 
indifference of ignorance. In the part of the 
English community who are aware of the United 
States as the "big show," to quote a Broad Street 
cotton broker, there is little resentment and much 
good-will. The "Tommy," the farmer, the shop- 
keeper, when he meets the individual American, 
has the tolerance of his kind for all alien folk that 
come from some other countrj^ than his own. 
302 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

They all seem a little strange to him, but they are 
"all right." He includes the American with the 
Australian and the Welshman. 

Public opinion, then, is not really concerned at 
all with exterminating German clerks, oppress- 
ing Irish peasants, annoying American business 
men. It is not "out" to govern the world or rule 
"backward races." 

What are its concerns ? 

Its main concern at the moment is to go through 
w^ith a bad job to the end, to win a victory in order 
to have a lasting peace. Englishmen hate war, 
and they were first astonished, then irritated, 
and finally angry that any nation should let loose 
a hideous slaughter into a fairly peaceable world. 
They were slow to believe German methods of 
fright fulness. In the early months I could get a 
hearing, but little credence, for the atrocities I 
had witnessed. A good-natured skepticism was 
the response. But once thoroughly in a nasty 
business, they are now determined to see it 
through. They will hang on. It is hard for 
them to pry loose when they have taken hold. 
When their clutch has automatically clicked and 
got set, there seems to be no device in the machin- 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

ery for setting itself free. And that offers the 
chance for the imperiahsts, with their "spheres of 
influence" and teiTitorial claims, to turn what 
was idealistic in the early purposes of the young 
men to their own advantage. "Why should n't 
England take a bit in return for the sacrifice?" 
One hears this idea occasionally expressed. This 
is not the will of England. The vast majority 
went into the war in a spirit of devotion, and they 
wish to come out of it as clean-handed and clean- 
minded as they entered. 

There is a powerful peace movement, not 
representing anything approaching a majority. 
It is, in fact, a small fraction of the community ; 
but I call it powerful because it worries the 
authorities, and because it is growing, though 
very slowly. The impression which Mr. Trevel- 
yan has given to America of a wide-spread desire 
for an immediate peace — a desire muzzled from 
expression by the authorities — is false ; but there 
is an increasing receptivity to the idea of peace. 

The next concern of public opinion is with the 
internal situation. The mind of the man belong- 
ing to the upper possessing class has become 
accustomed to change. For a generation he has 
304 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

felt the foundation growing unsteady. The in- 
stitutions which seemed to him immutable are 
visibly modifying — the institutions of property, 
church, and marriage. He is not in favor of the 
ever-spreading change, but he has mentally 
accepted the fact that change is taking place. 
The old authority has passed to other hands, and 
he is bewildered by the juggle which has trans- 
formed upper-class rule into democratic control. 
Nothing in itself now surprises him, because the 
whole process is amazing. Without a protest he 
has seen state socialism installed at Westminster 
and feminism at the War Office. Patiently he 
awaits what will happen next and what will come 
of it all. What has been undermined is "a 
certain organic conception of society — the con- 
ception of the hierarchy of authorities which 
dominated the Middle Ages. The old order has 
been destroyed by the new ideals of justice and 
liberty, beginning with religion, passing on to 
politics," modifying industiy, "and reaching at 
last the private relations of marriage and the 
family." These new ideals have penetrated the 
thought of the community, and have gradually 
sought fulfilment in the lagging, painful proc- 
305 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

esses of legislation. The older type of politician 
was unable to frame such revolutionaiy concepts 
into acts, so what has happened is the creation of 
a new order of civil servants. "What is grow- 
ing, rapidly, and yet almost unobserved by the 
public, is expert legislation by permanent offi- 
cials." 

It is small wonder that the elderly, kindly 
gentleman whom we have taken as representative 
of his class is dazed by the shifting world of flux 
where once he stood firmly. He is on a moving- 
sidewalk, and he is quite sure he is under way, 
though he himself is not walking. But not only 
is that gentle conservative puzzled by the ad- 
vance; the general public have not intellectually 
realized the change which their own impulse 
toward freedom has created. Pubhc opinion 
to-day is constantly in the attitude of a man who 
has his desires answered before he has stated 
them. The democratic state is moving faster 
than the individual citizen, and he is mentally con- 
fused. The moving finger writes, and public 
opinion will have to find its place in the appendix 
to the Book of Acts, recording the establishment 
of democratic control during the Great War. 
306 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

WHERE THE LANE TURNS 

A letter has come to me from a friend. He 
is a charming writer, fellow of a Cambridge 
college. He objects to my summary dismissal 
of the older England as recorded in the preceding 
chapter. He says : 

"If ever there was a typical Oxford man, with 
an Oxford cast of thought in the direct Oxford 
tradition, it is H. A. L. Fisher, the new minister 
of education. The new ministry of labor, being 
forced to get a permanent head capable of deal- 
ing with the problems they are up against, does 
not get a trade-union leader, but an Eton-Balliol 
scholar and fellow of All Souls. I am afraid, as 
a narrow-minded pedant, I am convinced that 
brains are what always tell in the long run, and 
I don't think commerce or "life" or the newer 
universities are yet the equal of the old univer- 
sities in producing and training brain. More- 
over, Oxford and Cambridge are not "south of 
England," as you suggest. Their geographical 
position has nothing to do with theu* nature. 
They are the oldest and most independent repub- 
lics in England and totally ex-territorial, like the 
city of Washington." 

307 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

Of course he is exactly right, and I beheve we 
are both right. Now is the meeting of the old 
and new, and even a profound modification of 
structure will include vestigial traces. Every 
summary statement concerning so complex a 
thing as the modern community must wait for 
verification on psychological records which have 
not yet been made. "Crowd psychology" is still 
in the hands of hasty generalizers and pseudo- 
scientists, who write of the "herd instinct." So 
it is with this book. It is a personal impression, 
and it paints in broad colors. A. E. Zimmern of 
the reconstruction committee, H. N. Spalding of 
the welfare department of the ministry of muni- 
tions, and Dr. Fisher, the minister of education, 
have all cautioned me against over-emphasizing 
the speed of change in so stable a community as 
the British nation and against making too logical 
and intellectualistic an analysis of British char- 
acter. The Briton is a sociable, humorsome 
fellow who moves slowly and is not logical in his 
ways, but proceeds along the lines of his own 
individualistic psychology in contact with his own 
peculiar and ancient environment. 

But a reconstruction is under way. A peace- 
SOS 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

able, slow-moving race has been swept by the 
winds of doctrine and the forces of change. 
Great questions are suddenly opened that were 
regarded as settled or non-existent, or bui'ied in 
the silence of respectability. Let me show the 
method of that change in the concrete instance of 
education. Two systems of education exist 
to-day in England side by side. There is the 
long-established system of private education for 
the upper class by the gi'eat schools of Eton, 
Harrow^ Rugby, Westminster, and the universi- 
ties of Oxford and Cambridge. There is public 
education by local boards and new universities. 
The two systems are unrelated, and so, from the 
point of view of a national system of education, 
they are anomalous. 

But because there is this anomaly, it does not 
follow that the reconstruction will "hack its way 
through." The process will be a filtration, and 
not a surgical operation. Slowly the great 
universities will be modernized, and steadily the 
new institutions will be urged to aim at the level 
of culture which the humanities gave. A "bread- 
and-butter" education alone will never be the 
one aim of Enghsh instruction. The arts alone 
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will never again be in sole command of the field. 
But a new progi-am will be wrought out of both 
sets of values. 

From a certain pubHc school twenty-seven out 
of twenty-eight scholarships to the university 
were taken in the humanities. It is improbable 
that twenty-seven out of twenty-eight represents 
the actual proportion in aptitude of that group 
for a literary culture as contrasted with a sci- 
entific culture. The probable proportion would 
be more like fourteen for the humanities, and 
fourteen for the science. To redi-ess that balance 
will be the task of the coming reconstruction, and 
it will be achieved without upsetting the English 
temperament and tradition. 

One elementary school differs from another as 
widely as an elementary school differs from Har- 
row. To level up elementary schools to standard 
without invading local autonomy is another dif- 
ficult task of the reconsti*uction. A few years ago 
education was decentralized, and the local boards, 
by refusing government grants, can separate their 
local institution from the national system. Not 
by offending these local boards can the better- 
ment come. The Government, by its financial 
310 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

gi-ants and by wise suggestion, can, however, 
influence the local boards to modem methods. 
Little by little modern educators will sit on those 
boards, and two men of forward-looking mind 
can swing a session of "stand-patters." It may 
be, at some point in the future, that full control 
of education will pass back to a central authority, 
and that what is now advisory will become man- 
datory. But the public are far from ready to 
accept such a change, and the local boards wiU 
continue to be the machinery through which the 
minister of education will operate. 

The period of adolescence of the working- 
class population will be gradually dealt with. 
Between fourteen and eighteen years of age there 
is a vast waste of vocational and cultural po- 
tentiality in the child. That waste is clearly 
recognized. The youngster as yet goes out from 
board school into blind-ally jobs, which leave him 
as unskilled and ignorant as an adult. Contin- 
uation schools, a system of part-time work and 
part-time instruction, a raising of the school age, 
more pay, and better teachers — these and a dozen 
other details will all be handled by the method I 
have outlined, which is never slashing and drastic 
311 



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reform by an autocratic state. It is largely the 
extension of an ancient practice to a wider group. 
It is partly the response of a flexible system to 
new knowledge. It is a gradual method, "brick 
on brick," as is the English way. But when the 
builders have completed their task, the structure 
will be new in the eyes of the community, and the 
institution housed there will be as little like the 
"Eton-Balliol" institution as King George V's 
commonwealth is like King George IV's Eng- 
land. 

The old system of education produced a gov- 
erning class, a group of men of integrity and 
trained intelligence. They legislated, colonized, 
hunted, and followed the life of culture with dis- 
tinction, and they continued to make England 
the greatest of the nations. As long as the old 
formulae and the old ethics were sufficient, the 
inheritors of that tradition were the inevitable 
masters of government. But suddenly the two 
aspects of government made an astonishing turn. 
Control of the environment entered on a new 
development with the coming of steam-power and 
machinery. The peasant and yeoman com- 
munity passed out of existence. The land went 
312 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

back to grass. Industrial cities and massed pop- 
ulations came in. And that new control of the 
enviromnent altered the other aspect of govern- 
ment — the relationship of man to man. Indus- 
trial organization created new alinements of 
partj^, interest, and class. The governing class 
began to flutter in a world not realized, like the 
thin-voiced shades about Ulysses. But the mass 
of the people, to whom the power passed, have 
not yet found their leaders. 

Two civilizations are coexistent here. One is 
a very ancient and noble civilization. The other 
is new and chaotic, caught in the process of 
becoming. The ancient civilization was sure of 
itself, possessing a tradition and code of action. 
The new is too busy to develop a technic of life or 
manner. It does n't know where it is going, but 
it is on the way. The effect is that of electric 
lighting in Warwick Castle or a trolley-car to 
Stonehenge. Everywhere in Great Britain one 
feels the modern thrusting through the rich soil 
and surface cake of what is older than the life of 
man. "The Popular Magazine" and "The Top 
Notch" are widely read in Ireland. In the little 
Hampshire village of Emsworth bright, new 
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jerry-built bungalows rise close to the huddle of 
centuries-old fishermen's cottages, and motor- 
cars flash past thatched roofs under the great 
spire of Chichester and come to rest in a ren- 
ovated moss-gi'own inn. Peasants touch their 
hats as you. pass and call you "sir," and the girl 
conductor of the omnibus is sometimes as curt 
and scornful as a Chicago expressman. In the 
Devon hamlet of Lewdown the farm women with 
whom we lived continue to make clotted cream as 
their likes made it when John Ridd climbed to his 
courting, but eagerly borrow my London paper 
every evening after the chores are done. The 
church is still firmly established, but the congre- 
gation waits for the afternoon service, and the 
afternoon service is held in the cinema house. 
The king is a very gallant and modest gentleman, 
but he does not possess the power of Arthur Hen- 
derson or the influence of H. W. Massingham. 
Still stands the House of Lords, but the lords of 
power are Devonport, Rhondda, and Northcliffe, 
business lords. The telephone and tram-car 
stretch their wires through lanes where the 
cavaliers rode, and there is an excellent tele- 
graph service in the village in which Baring 
•314< 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

Gould is writing the legends of his country- 
side. 

The new-comers are not taking the Kingdom 
by violence. They do not tear down the old. 
No, they take the heart out of it, and let it wither 
like a plant stung by the frost. The wreckers 
will never march through England armed with 
condemnation vin-its and blasting-powder. But 
gradually the light railways spread their threads, 
while "The Daily Mail" scatters its modernism to 
millions. It is possible by careful selection to 
convince oneself that the former things have not 
passed away. It is true, that they linger, but 
new forces are in command, and England of the 
poets is an old-age pensioner in the house of her 
daughters of the British conmionwealth. They 
make war in vain who fight against these things. 
Raw energy is in the saddle, and the galled jade 
must gallop to new spurs. 

THE NEW WAY 

Liberalism has ceased to be a political theorj'' 

and has become a program of reconstruction, 

planning reform by intensive intellectual effort. 

After the Napoleonic wars a period of deadness 

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set in, and gradually middle-class liberalism, bar- 
ren of ideas, assmned control. It did not come 
to gi'ips with its world, because it did not have the 
proper method. But in recent years the way to 
study human society has been discovered. A 
group of university men began to put their 
thought on the organization of human life. The 
working-class party sprang up. There has never 
existed so wide a division between the intjsllectuals 
and the workers in England as in America. The 
English workers have never swallowed whole the 
Marxian analysis. They have preferred step by 
step reform to the spreading of a theory. 

As the result of much patient piece-meal work, 
based on "the accumulation and analysis of eco- 
nomic knowledge," a whole new body of legisla- 
tion was incorporated into Enghsh life, beginning 
with the year 1906. That process continues. 
The principles of this reconstruction are derived 
from the conception that a community must work 
hard with its mind in order to organize a good so- 
ciety. Untrammeled by dogma, the practical 
Enghsh intelligence, both of the working-class 
brain and of the intellectuals, has set about re- 
shaping its institutions of property and state. 
316 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

The Fabian Society and "The Round Table" 
group have aided in the work of collecting facts 
and sharpening the analysis. There have been 
brilliant scouts Hke Wells and Shaw. But back 
of them, and providing them with the equipment 
for their sorties, are the hard workers with a 
genius for taking pains, like the Webbs, Seebohm 
Rowntree, and Bruno Lasker. "The develop- 
ment of more dehcate logical methods and the 
accumulation of recorded observations are now 
making deliberate thought about mankind less in- 
exact and misleading than at any other point in 
history." 

Lately, many persons have been thinking with 
the lash on them. How to stop the Zeppelins, 
make shells, and overcome the damage of war — 
these questions are being dealt with at high 
speed. The community is becoming aware of 
itself; it is devising an imperial economy, which 
correlates industry to national needs and includes 
the family budget in its process of thought. The 
easy generalizations of political exiles and closet- 
philosophers have been displaced by fact-inves- 
tigations and analysis from the records. Laissez- 
faire, the economic man, economic determinism, 
317 



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and the other substitutes for hard work, no longer 
content the community which wishes to find itself. 
Patiently and gropingly, a synthesis for the new 
society is being formed. 

Almost unobserved, a literature is forming 
around the social movement. It is a literature 
where the pressure of thought has been so intense 
and controlled that it has wrought for itself a 
special style. I feel sure that if Professor Saints- 
bury were to extend his anthology of "English 
Prose Rythms," he would include paragraphs 
from Bertrand Russell, A. E., Edward Carpen- 
ter, Lowes Dickinson, Havelock Ellis, and Gra- 
ham Wallas. They carry a tone and accent, giv- 
ing pleasure to the inward ear. These men write 
a clear and precise English, which travels easily 
and without fatigue, and often rises to beauty on 
its own momentum of thought. They seem to 
have hfted the technic of style to a new level; 
perhaps no higher than that of several earlier 
periods, but different. They have introduced a 
fresh cadence into the prose music of the last four 
centuries. There is an absence of premeditated 
eloquence, of overstatement, of the wind of words. 
There has come a realization that the limit of lan- 
318 



i 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

guage in one direction had been reached with 
"multitudinous seas" and "purple riot," and that 
the prose writers who pushed along that track of 
the poets reached a point of strain in De Quincey 
and Landor beyond which laughter lurked. The 
inevitable reaction gave us the clear, cold drear- 
iness of Herbert Spencer and the suppression 
and aridity of Arnold. 

But these modern prose writers, interpreting 
the new social order, have taken a fresh trail. 
And I do not doubt they have abohshed the 
purple patch as effectually as they have avoided 
the anemia of thwarted impulse. Their meaning 
is more exactl}'- expressed than in the pages of 
men who used loosely and cheaply "God," 
"nature," "happiness," and "society." But the 
pains of a scientific precision have not silenced 
the music. There is none of the jumbled ter- 
minology of our troubled "sociologists" and psy- 
chologists. These men have lifted their scholar- 
ship into simplicity. It is perhaps only an 
interesting chance that tw^o of them are math- 
ematicians, but it is profoundly significant that 
all of them are students of human society, not in 
the old literary way of projecting Utopias, but 
319 



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through the process of hard thinking on the facts 
of life. 

"In the end it is the psychological question of 
fact which will have to settle the ethical question 
of conduct." 

It is no longer enough for us that a passage in 
a book shall be "well written," as the famous and 
unintelligent pages of Lecky on prostitution. 
Writing that concerns itself with society, if it is 
to win a response from us, must be grounded on 
observation of the facts. It must bring a sci- 
entific method to bear on "the vast and constantly 
growing accumulation of recorded observations." 
Surely in these choice writers of the reconstruc- 
tion we have that quality which the democracy, if 
it is wise, will cherish. We have that natural 
aristocracy, that sovereignty of the best, which 
alone is able to set a standard for the mass-peo- 
ple. 

THE NEW AMERICANISM 
Around 20,000,000 happy firesides the fathers of 
America will gather this night with their unbroken 
family circle, with their children upon their knees and 
their wives by their side, happy and prosperous. Con- 
trast this with the fathers, husbands and brothers of 
320 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

the Old World, dying in the ditches. . . . Who is it 
that would have our President exchange with the blood- 
bespattered monarchs of the Old World? . . . He is 
the world teacher, his class is made up of kings, kaisers, 
czars, princes, and potentates. — Senator OUie JameSy 
Permanent Chairman of the Democratic National Con- 
vention. 

With the causes and the objects of this war we are 
not concerned. — Woodrow Wilson, President of the 
United States. 

The superb assurance of Captain Hans Rose, 
coupled with his inimitable ability, shown "when he 
brought the U-53 into Newport, Rhode Island, paid 
and received visits of courtesy, handed to an American 
newspaper man a letter for Ambassador von Bems- 
torfF, dived and was away on a mission of destruction 
within three hours, carries with it a wholesome savor 
of knightly conduct that goes home to the moral center 
of every American. — "The Evening Gazette," Cedar 
Rapids, Iowa. 

I write this article as the result of conver- 
sations and correspondence with a wide group of 
Americans and English and French, made up of 
politicians, economists, historians, psychologists, 
and literary men. I find in thoughtful men 
to-day both in America and Europe a challenge 
of certain tendencies in our national thought. I 
321 



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believe that challenge to be well grounded. A 
great mass of talk and letters suddenly came to 
focus one day in what one man, a distinguished 
scholar, expressed to me. So in what follows I 
have taken the lines and phrases of his thought. 
But what he stated is only the clear expression 
of what many are saying and feeling. 

We have failed to teach our true American 
tradition to new-comers, but certain of our 
newspapers and of our popular voices have been 
busy in creating a legend of Americanism which 
contains an element of falsity. We have dis- 
played a self-complacency in our proclamation 
of freedom, a readiness to assume that it was our 
monopoly, and that no other nation understood 
so fully what it meant or had done such service 
for it. This has led to a lack of sympathy with 
other nations that have achieved freedom or are 
aspiring after it or are helping to strengthen and 
extend it. This attitude has been reflected in 
our school histories. The establishment of Amer- 
ican independence is represented in these school- 
books, in newspaper writing, in popular speeches, 
as a protest agamst tjTanny, a breaking-away 
from Old- World chains. But this is not how 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

scientific historians of the modern school see that 
event. Despite her gi-ave mistakes then, Eng- 
land had endowed our States, as she has endowed 
every settlement of European stock which she 
has planted, with the institutions of self-govern- 
ment, from which sprang our desire for a wider 
freedom. Despite the many mistakes she has 
made since, she has carried freedom and justice 
to new populations, and has been an unwearied 
breeder of free nations. Our popular concep- 
tion of our Revolution, our self-complacency in 
our proclamation of freedom as an American 
monopoly, have kept us out of an organic rela- 
tion with the whole world of civilization. We 
have failed in recent years to feel that this world 
is one, and the cause of freedom a single cause, 
to whose fortunes no free society can be indif- 
ferent or neutral. That breach is a tragedy, per- 
haps one of the greatest tragedies in history. It 
has been a bad thing for civiHzation, because it 
has weakened the defense of freedom by alienat- 
ing its strongest advocates from one another, and 
persuading one of them to stand aloof from its 
struggles. It has been a bad thing for America, 
by leading her to imagine that she is not as other 
323 



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nations are, and that the working out of the great 
issues of civilization in Europe had no interest 
for her. 

This falsity in the popular view of the Euro- 
pean situation has cut us off from sympathy with 
other peoples who have loved freedom not less 
sincerely. We have continually misunderstood 
England, the tyrant state which America had 
defied. We have had the cm'ious spectacle of a 
friendship between the two nations that was al- 
most whoUy one-sided. England has repeatedly 
helped and supported us ; we have not really be- 
heved that England stood, in the main, for free- 
dom and justice. And what is ti-ue of our atti- 
tude toward England is true in varj'ing degree 
of our attitude toward the other "old strugglers" 
of Em'ope. We have not believed it was our 
duty to give support to Belgimn, to the French, 
or to the Itahans in the struggle for the enlarge- 
ment of hbertj'. 

AMien the autocrats of the Holy Alhance were, 
as Caiming put it, "aspiring to bind Em'ope in 
chains," they cmshed the movement toward free- 
dom in Italy and Spain, and then purposed to 
crush it also in Spanish America. Camiing, in 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

the name of Great Britain, defied them, recog- 
nized the independence of the Spanish colonies, 
and made it plain that the British fleet would re- 
sist any attempt to send armies to South Amer- 
ica. He approached our Government with the 
suggestion that the United States should take 
their stand by the side of Great Britain. Presi- 
dent Monroe's message was the result. That 
was the promise that America was going to make 
freedom her concern even outside of her own 
bounds. It was not a proclamation of suzer- 
ainty over the double continent. ^lonroe's mes- 
sage and the fear of the British fleet kept Euro- 
pean armies out of South America. It is the 
British fleet which has in recent years saved the 
Monroe Doctrine from challenge. But our pop- 
ular conception has turned the Monroe Doctrine 
into an assertion of American self-containedness 
and indifference to Europe. 

Again, in the Spanish-American War we made 
the cause of freedom outside our bounds our own 
cause. But having done this, we came to regard 
it as only an American question. There was 
nothing which the Spaniards did in Cuba com- 
parable with what the Germans have done in Bel- 
3^5 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

gium. The sinking of the Maine was no less 
capable of explanation and excuse than the sink- 
ing of the Lusitama. There was no tie of ob- 
ligation to Cuba more primal than our national 
signature to The Hague conventions. The Bel- 
gian outrages were as much om* concern as the 
Cuban outrages. 

Loyalty to an ideal becomes vulgarized and 
tarnished when it is interpreted in a self-regard- 
ing way. It is not freedom that our people have 
been recently worshiping, but only the brand of 
it called American freedom, which we have per- 
suaded ourselves is something peculiar and dif- 
ferent in kind from other brands. By our news- 
paper and popular conception of Americanism 
we have not taught our new-comers the American 
tradition of Franklin, Monroe, Lincoln, and John 
Hay. We have taught them to despise other 
lands, to regard all the peoples of the Old World 
as alike reactionary and illiberal. We have 
failed to impart an understanding of the labors 
for the expansion of liberty which have been un- 
dertaken by other peoples. Many of our people 
have come to believe that since American freedom 
is something peculiar or esoteric, it has few or no 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

responsibilities in the larger world, and may 
rightly become self -regarding. In the present 
war it appears as little more than the opportu- 
nity of enlarging material prosperity. The ob- 
ligation of sacrifice, the maintenance of other 
than our own rights, seem the wild words of 
idealists like Putnam and Morton Prince, and 
the quixotic acts of college boys like the mem- 
bers of the Norton Ambulance. An ideal of 
freedom that is restricted and purely self-regard- 
ing, however eloquent the phrases that clothe it, 
is an uninspiring ideal. It is not astonishing 
that many of our citizens, under the influence of 
this ideal, have concentrated their attention on 
making money from the agonies of Europe. It 
is not astonishing that some elements among them 
have found greater inspiration in the exacting 
demands of the ideals of other nations. Even 
the German ideal demands heroic sacrifice. A 
belief in liberty so self-regarding as ours cozens 
itself that Hberty is served even by accepting the 
Lusitania crime, passing lightly over the Belgian, 
Lorraine, and Ai'menian horrors, and submitting 
to the outrages of U-53. 

Our recent immigrants are led to believe that 
327 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

in coming to America they are coming to the only 
real home of liberty, that they have no responsi- 
bility for the championing of justice elsewhere, 
and that they have no concern with the dog- 
fights of the "effete monarchies" and enemies of 
liberty left in Europe. Some of these new-com- 
ers are ready to adopt that view because they 
come from lands where tyranny is still in com- 
mand. Justice and freedom are not made to ap- 
pear to them one supreme cause wherever they 
are on trial, worthy of sacrifice ; but they appear 
as achievements of our own, peculiar to us, re- 
warded with material advantages. With them 
our historic tradition is not an inheritance. 
With many of them it is not even an acquisition. 
The terms of the life which created our tradition 
were not terms of ease and aloofness. The life 
was a struggle with pioneer primitive conditions, 
against forces of nature, hostile bands of Indians, 
foreign troops, and traitorous men among us. 
But our recent immigrants have come to us to 
escape from severe conditions, and their cry is, in 
the words of Mary Ant in, "What has America 
given us?" Corruption in politics and business, 
328 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

cosmopolitanism in feeling, luxmy, waste, com- 
mercialism — all these are increasingly the prod- 
ucts of the recent years. Instead of being the 
struggling arena for a great experiment in de- 
mocracy, we are becoming the grab-bag for all 
that is predatory in human nature. With the 
change in blood has come a change in national 
character. We are shaking off the old beliefs, 
the tradition of sacrifice and disciphne and re- 
sponsibility. 

In a smaller matter than the present World 
War we could comfort ourselves with the fail- 
ures of other nations. We have high precedent 
for our abstention from crisis. But this is a mo- 
ment when France and England are well served 
by their tradition of freedom and justice, and 
when our modern Americanism lends itself to an 
easy distortion. It is a moment when one is 
proud to be a Frenchman or an Englishman, and 
when we, for all our prosperity, do not feel very 
proud to be American. There have been mo- 
ments in the past when the prides would have 
been reversed; but this is not one of them, and 
this is the greatest moment of history. 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

NATIONALITY 

In a Frenchman nationality can be set aflame 
by a touch. He has consciously thought about 
it. This is because he and his fellows as a na- 
tion have been invaded again and again, and as 
a nation have marched out across Europe. Al- 
most every half-century France has gone for- 
ward to the frontier, following or facing some im- 
perialist, to bleed its life away. So a French- 
man kindles at thought of his nation, and 
that thought is a love for the soil of his patrie, 
for the house where he was born, and for the 
sunlight and the equality of his beautiful coun- 
try. 

The nationality of a German is a touchy affair. 
It was only a few years ago that his country was 
a handful of petty states. Now suddenly a big, 
powerful, deific engine, the state, has somehow 
gathered him in with the weak kingdoms, and he 
is half afraid that the concern will slip away in 
the night, and leave him again with his dreams 
and his music, and his empire broken back into 
small bits. He is still in the pain of a swift 
process. 

630 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

The myth of nationaHty is a profound and nec- 
essary truth, as well-grounded as any that gov- 
erns human nature. It is blind and brutal and 
righteous. It moves to aggression, or lives peace- 
ably at home. It builds big guns or is pastoral. 
It is merely the collective expression of human 
nature in the particular group which circum- 
stance and natural liking have created. It was 
formed as much bj^ chance as the family — acci- 
dent, propinquity^ commercial considerations. 
Once formed, it is as natural as the family. 
Tagore says that "a new age is imminent, when 
the ideal of nationalism will be discarded." 

But a greater than Tagore has said: 

What muddles the moderns about the institution of 
the family is what muddles them also about National- 
ism: it is this double aspect of unity and multiplicity. 
The principle of one house, one vote, seems to them a 
crumbling dream. So some of them cannot believe in 
the corporate mystery of patriotism, though it sets 
the world on fire before their very eyes. They ask 
what a nation is ; and can only be shown dissolving 
views and visions. They see a mob tossing in a market- 
place; and then a king sitting alone upon a throne of 
marble; and then only innumerable interiors, like cells 
of a bee-hive, with each man eating his own breakfast 
331 



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and minding his own business; and then, again, only 
smoke and sky, and a painted rag upon a pole that 
drives out upon the driving wind. And all these are 
one thing. 

That nationality does, as a matter of fact, pen- 
etrate to deeper soui'ces of instinctive life than 
other forms of association, such as religion and 
socialism, is proved by the alinements of the 
present war, where comrade fights comrade, and 
Catholic fights Catholic. Zimmern gives the 
reason : 

Why should our citizenship take precedence of our 
trade unionism or our business obligations? Aristotle 
replies, and in spite of recent critics I think the reply 
still holds good: because, but for the existence of the 
State and the reign of law maintained by it, none of 
these associations could have been formed or be main- 
tained. 

Nationality lies very deeply buried in the sub- 
consciousness of an Englishman. It required a 
world war to dig it out. Empire talk never ex- 
isted with the English till it came to the surface 
with Burke, and received from him a certain 
shaping and impetus. It dozed again till Dis- 
332 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

raeli gave it a shove, and it sped along rather 
briskly in the latter days of Victoria and her Sec- 
ond Jubilee. But it never took strong hold of 
the general imagination, and there have been few 
jingo hysterias breaking about the idea of em- 
pire. There is of course an inner group of men, 
highly aware of empire as an affair of the state, 
and a much wider group of upper-class families 
whose sons find their career in being governors, 
magistrates, and minor officials. The Anglo- 
Indian, for instance, is a rather well-defined 
type. The young men have to go somewhere. 
They can't go into trade. They are well ed- 
ucated, men of honor, and, often enough, with 
a touch of vitality and adventure. Accordingly 
many of them trek off to the ends of the earth 
and enter public service in a crown colony. Such 
men were Cromer, Milner, and Curzon. 

A few of them go farther yet, and push the 
imperial map into the jungle, or plant the flag in 
a floe. Selous was a true Englishman of this 
sort. So was Scott. The same breed of men 
are the sailors, and they have kept his Majesty's 
navy up to specifications for three hundred 
years. That is nationality for them, streaking 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

out over polar ice, splashing through swamps, 
and rolling through the seven seas. 

But these men are a tiny fraction of the com- 
munity, — "men of Biddeford in Devon," — and 
their idea of England as a good place to see once 
a year or once in three years is n't the national- 
ity of the mass. The nationality of the mass of 
people lies deep, and in quiet days they hardly 
know they have it. There is a lot of silent pride 
in the navy and sea-power, and the "Britannia 
rule the waves" line probably comes as near to 
saying something as a popular song usually does. 
But of a dramatization of the "Island-Queen" 
there is none in the popular mind. The uncon- 
scious pride is enormous. You feel it in the ab- 
ject loneliness of an Enghshman off British soil. 
I have had very intimate English friends in New 
York, and there was always a kind of "lost" 
quality about their personality. They were 
loyal to the place that gave them bread, but they 
waited for the return with a long and touching 
patience. It was my fortune to see them re- 
turned, and catch the sigh of relief which the first 
years of the home-coming called out. Every 
simple little thing seemed good to these men, and 
834 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

they would point out to me the wide commons of 
Wimbledon and the small, friendly locomotives 
of the suburban railway. An Enghshman has to 
suffer before he knows he has a country. 

It is suffering which the war has brought, the 
sense that something precious and intimate is im- 
periled. The Englishman likes the customs of 
his country and his own way of carrying on. 
Very slowly he learned that something was going 
to intrude and destroy that private wilfulness, 
that right of the individual man not only to his 
life, which is a little thing, but to his own peculiar 
way of living it, which is an important thing. 
His sense of possession of individual liberty is 
stronger than his property sense. Gradually the 
impression came upon him that there was a hub- 
bub across the channel, and that the noise was 
growing louder, that if he did n't do something 
there would be no end to it. His peace and quiet 
would be gone, and he would have to live by some 
one else's rules. As a young Englishwoman 
said to me: "We don't want strangers to step 
in and impose on us their manner of life. We 
don't want to be speeded up." 

But still we have failed to reach the basis of 
335 



IXSTDK rilK BRITISH ISI.KS 

the instinctive nationality in an Englislmian. I 
think it lies in the feelings grvnipeii aroiuid liis 
locality aiid his set of friends, the values that are 
closely familiar. One hears a man irxnn Ber- 
nardsville, Xew Jersey, Ixiast alxnit Niagara 
Falls aiid the Rocky Moimtains as if they were 
landscape f eatings of his back yard ; bnt an Eng- 
hshmau« if he talks at all. will speak of the fields 
he has himteil aorv^ss, and the pleasant tiurn of tlie 
hills that are in sight from his windows. 

I was glad to get it on go<-xi authority that I 
was right alv^ut this kx\il patriotism. Captain 
Basil Williams has made a careful study of the 
organization of the Britisli army. It is the fmic- 
tion of his department to do so. He told me the 
nature of the ap^>eal by whicli the millions of men 
were recniiteii. It was n't a \-ague, noisy crusade 
of adTertising posters and general patriotism. 
It was directly aimed at where the men hveii luid 
their feeling of comradeship. The regiments 
were recruiteil by comities. (A few regiments 
came from more than one coimt)."^ The unit 
of recruiting is the battalion of one thousand 
men. In the original standing army, and in the 
new annies, the basis of the system is the regi- 
336 



I 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

mental local idea. Devonsliire means something 
to a Lewdown man that Columhia County, New 
York, does not mean to a Hudson man. The 
Devon man and his people have shot rabbits and 
ruled the sea from that village in that county 
for several centuries. 

When the war began and large numbers of 
recruits poured in, the old regimental system was 
maintained, and every new battalion was affil- 
iated to some old regiment. The first new units 
were the special reserves, a battalion or two for 
each regiment, corresponding to the old militia. 
Then there came battalions of territorials, cor- 
responding to the old volunteers. These terri- 
torials would be chosen from the smaller country 
districts. Then followed the service battalions. 

It was difficult at first to obtain equipment 
and housing. So municipalities organized bat- 
talions in their own locality, and handed them 
over when the army was ready for them. Men 
said they would like to go with their neighbors 
and pals. Clerks, sportsmen, foot-ball players, 
men with the same interest in life, chummed to- 
gether. War was a strange, new job, leaving 
the individual man lonely, and he wished to face 
337 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

it with friends. These "pal" battalions were 
still attached to the original regiment. 

In both the service and pals battalions Kitch- 
ener wished reserves. So each battahon added 
to its one thousand men five hundred more men, 
making a reserve battalion. Thus there resulted 
a reserve battalion of service battalions, and a 
reserve battalion of pals battalions. 

There is no unit of numbers for a regiment, 
which can have two thousand men or twenty thou- 
sand. One regiment has twenty-six battalions, 
but the expanding numbers are glued together 
by the comradeship of long association in the 
pursuits of peace and by the sense of locality. 

The first two armies, Kl and K2, were new 
service battalions from every regiment of the 
British army. The old army was thus dupli- 
cated by the first two new armies. The third 
new army, K3, was raised where recruiting was 
best, largely in the northern and western por- 
tions. K4 and K5 were made up of pals battal- 
ions. Of course all the other arms of service, 
medical staff, engineers, artillery, were raised 
locally, and were represented in these units. 
And this appeal to local patriotism has been the 
328 



SOCIAL STUDIES 

method of increasing an army of five hundred 
thousand to five million. 

Every regiment has ancient rights and priv- 
ileges and points of local pride. The Honour- 
able Artillery Company has the right to march 
through London with fixed bayonets, and the 
men exercise the right. At the entrance of the 
city they halt, unbuckle the bayonet, and thrust 
it into place. This ancestral quality to an army 
unit gives an esprit de corps that the men inherit, 
and a tradition which touches them to quickened 
service. It is a survival of the old linked bat- 
talion system, which provided that there should 
be two regular battalions, one normally abroad, 
and one in England. Overseas service and 
peace had combined to create the system. It 
gave an expeditionary force to guard India and 
South Africa. The old feehng was entirely 
regimental. Lately there has been an extension 
of the scale of feeling corresponding to the vast 
area of the war itself, and the division has become 
more important than ever before, and develops 
a self -consciousness of its own. This extension 
of feeling and organization keeps step with the 
new organized state, which is replacing the 
339 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

tiny village republics of local self-government. 
But local pride is still the tap-root of English 
nationality, and I shall not forget the inhabitants 
of Stratford as they gathered around the public 
notices that recorded the performances of the 
"Warwicksliires." In the early days of the war 
the German chanted "Deutschland," but the 
Tommy sang of Leicester Square. Just now 
"Blighty" is the word. Soon it will be some 
other phrase, but always it will tell of a little 
place, a city street or a country lane. 



340 



CHAPTER VI 

LLOYD-GEORGE 

I HAVE recently come from a long talk with 
Mr. L/loyd-George. What he convinced me of 
was that he understands and cares for our coun- 
try. Frankly, I had doubted this. I was left 
subdued by his militant interview on "Hands 
Off," which was harsh and necessary, but which 
did not bind Downing Street, London, to First 
Avenue, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. For two years I 
had wished that an English statesman would lift 
clear of his business with the enemy and give a 
word for neutral public opinion. Lloyd-George 
talked and listened for an hour and three quar- 
ters on the one subject of the middle West of 
America. He understands the people. He 
knows that the public policy of the nation is de- 
termined there. He knows that our democratic 
experiment is being decided by the prairie States. 
He quoted a remark of Henry Ford not with 
amusement or scorn, but as significant. By that 
341 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

he revealed that he knows more about the real 
America than half the editors of Eastern news- 
papers. 

He understands America with the same sym- 
pathy which Lincoln showed for the Lancashire 
cotton operatives in his famous letter to them. 
Lloyd-George has the same desire for a frank 
presentation of facts that Henry Ward Beecher 
revealed in his appeals to the British public in the 
industrial cities. What he wishes is that our 
people should hold the same sympathy with the 
struggle of the European democracies that the 
working-classes of England learned to feel for 
our Civil War struggle, after Lincoln and 
Beecher had made clear to them that we were 
fighting for human hberty. Mr. Lloyd-George 
does not regard the war as a dog-fight or as a 
sporting proposition. He sees it as an incalcu- 
lable tragedy. With his Celtic imagination he 
lives in a profound sense of the pity and the waste 
of it. He has as httle hate and bitterness as the 
soldiers of England and France with whom I 
have lived at the front. 

He has a habit of informal breakfast at a sunny 
little flat about ten minutes away from Downing 



LLOYD-GEORGE 

Street. Here two or three of his friends meet 
him. He comes in well rested, and decides points 
of pohcy and indulges in reminiscence, amusing 
and poetic. And all his talk has a lightness of 
touch. The guests of this morning were Mr. 
Davies, the war secretary; Seebohm Rowntree, 
the manufacturer and social worker, whose books 
on the study of poverty are as well known in 
America as in England; and H. N. Spalding. 
Mr. Rowntree and Mr. Spalding are conducting 
the department of welfare work in the ministry 
of munitions. 

"Are you giving them welfare?" he asked Mr. 
Rowntree. "Here," he said, turning to me, "is 
the greatest attempt ever made by a government 
to surround the lives of the workers with safe- 
guards for their safety and health and well- 
being." 

"What Americans and English need more than 
any one thing else is a smoking-room acquaint- 
ance, where they exchange their views informally 
and get to know the man." 

It is this smoking-room intimacy that Mr. 
Lloyd-George gives to all whom he meets. He 
is not afraid of being himself. He is as daring 
343 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

in his comments on men and things as Mr. Roose- 
velt, as charming as the late William James. He 
is used to being loved. The lines about the eyes 
reveal a man who works his purpose by geniality 
in a flow of fun and charm and sympathy. The 
political battles of twenty years have left less im- 
pression on his spirit than the victories he has 
won as peace-maker and harmonizer. He re- 
ferred to two editors who have recently been at- 
tacking him. He said : 

"I don't mind their criticizing me. I can take 
blows and I can give them. But they are mak- 
ing it hard for us to get together after the war. 
We don't want differences when we come to the 
work of reconstruction." 

He ends a talk by being more completely the 
master of your thought than you are yourself. 
He states it clearly and beautifully, and reduces 
it to a program of action. 

"To understand your people or any people," 
he said, "it is necessary for one to pass inside the 
temple." 

He practises what Sainte-Beuve preached, 
that to know a religion you must be a worshiper 
inside the church. So week by week Sainte- 



LLOYD-GEORGE 

Beuve became a mystic and a pagan and an 
epicurean as he served up the soul of the writer 
whom he was interpreting. This is the high gift 
which Lloyd-George possesses. He can step up 
to the very altar of a man's most secret belief. 
This is the gift which has made him the one 
Briton who is perfectly understood in France. 
He spoke only a couple of sentences inside the 
citadel of Verdun, but they revealed to France 
that he knew what that symbol meant to them. 
For in his best moments he becomes something 
other than the grim fighter, and the adi'oit pol- 
itician who uses all the tricks of the game. Sud- 
denly for his hearers, and unexpectedly to him- 
self, he lifts by an exquisite imagination to the 
place of insight, and becomes the voice of ob- 
scure people, and understands men he has never 
met. If he talks with a slangy person, he dis- 
charges himself in vivid, staccato phrases. The 
nature and direction of his rebound are deter- 
mined by the substance that he encounters. He 
was born to react. He has a mind that kindles, 
and a style that rises verj^ lightly and gracefully 
into poetic beauty. There has been no such pas- 
sage of prose produced by the war as that para- 
345 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

graph of his on 'little nations" at the beginning 
of the fight. 

A breezy young officer of the flying service 
once told me the shameful secret of Lloyd- 
George. It was that the war minister went 
around obtaining advice from experts, that 
he really didn't know all about it by him- 
self. ■ 

Earlier in the war a prominent banker told me 
that the then chancellor of the exchequer was 
not the financial authority which the multitude 
thought him, that he held consultations with lead- 
ing bankers, that, in fact, the chancellor had con- 
sulted with his own firm. 

Lloyd-George is the leader of a democracy be- 
cause he chums with experts, and swings to the 
currents of the collective will. His personality 
contains the virtues and the perils of the democ- 
racy itself. For it, too, may some day establish 
a bureaucracy of experts that could be the 
tightest little oligarchy of history, and it, too, 
may yet swing to tides that are ebbing. It is 
not often that one sees a community incarnating 
itself in a single man. But the British democracy 
has its incarnation in Lloyd-George, responsive 
346 



LLOYD-GEORGE 

to vast subconscious forces, and turning to 
specialists for aid in crises. 

He faces the most difficult years of his life, 
and he knows it. A man of his temperament can 
conduct a great war. All that was needed was 
the inspirational quality to rouse his people, the 
energy to set them at work, the creative imagina- 
tion to see the war in its extent, its duration, its 
requirements. None of these tests has over- 
taxed his powers, for they all lay inside the area 
of his competence. But when peace comes, 
there is no longer one straight road to a clear 
goal. All the forces of reaction will coalesce. 
All the bad counselors will make a cloud of wit- 
ness about him. All the paths to immediate 
power will lie in "playing safe." If he remains 
true to himself, he will be cursed with a vehem- 
ence which will make his early years seem a sweet 
season of delight. There will be no easy vic- 
tories. All will be turmoil and bitterness, for 
we are at the beginning of the greatest fight of 
the ages — the fight of the democracies inside 
themselves. We had our little Lloyd-George in 
America, a well known former district-attorney 
of New York. He had the same transcendent 
34'7 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

charm. But the wrong crowd got him, not by 
ilhcit means. They won him on his social side, 
the quahty in the man that likes people and 
wishes to be liked. And he lost his sense of direc- 
tion. He forgot the long, hard fight he was 
making to give the people better government. 

The coming years of Lloyd-George will be de- 
termined by the kind of persons who surround 
him, and touch that sensitive, quivering mind to 
action. If he holds fast to his good Welsh 
friends and to men hke Dr. Clifford, the sturdy 
old radical warrior of nonconformity, he will go 
simply all his days, and continue to express the 
living element of his people. But if he leans to- 
ward the men of power, and listens to those 
voices, who will tell him of the kingdoms of this 
world, and who will promise him the leadership 
of a reactionary militaristic Tory party, he will 
lose his own soul. For the genius of the man 
is his human sympathy. He was meant to be a 
pathfinder for feet too tired to win their own 
way into the open. He was meant to think him- 
self inside the mind of other men and other races. 

The future rests with him as with no other 
single man among the Western peoples. He 
348 



LLOYD-GEORGE 

will face a world no longer sharply defined into 
enemies, allies, and neutrals, but a world where 
unguessed tendencies are forming, and new forces 
of emancipation are fighting for recognition. 
We have this to go on for hope : Lloyd-George 
is a democrat by temperament and he under- 
stands America. 



349 



VALE 

I HAVE sought in this book to show the passing 
of England, — Little England, Old England, — 
the crumbling of its caste system, and the emer- 
gence of the England of John Bull and Crom- 
well's soldiers from inarticulateness into power. 
And a yet greater thing has come — the advent 
of the new British commonwealth. Democratic 
control is being established. Labor is taking 
over the management of society. The women 
have gone out to win their world, and they face 
a bitter struggle. The book further records the 
wonderful rebirth of nationality in Ireland. It 
shows the machinery of joint boards, labor ex- 
changes, workshop councils, imperial conference 
and franchise extension, by which the transfor- 
mation will be worked. It tells of the terms of 
the new status for the masses; minimum wage, 
limitation of hours, choice of work, control inside 
the industry. Every change was long prepared 
for, and built out of age-old materials, and every 
change is made by compromise. But the change 
carries a long way, because the momentum is 
350 



VALE 

continuous and along a straight line. After all, 
there is nothing so revolutionary as a great 
tradition, and the most daring reconstructors are 
often men of Tory blood. 

So I have tried to show that this change is not 
a hasty chance revolution, but the natural growth 
of the English tradition. The little vessel that 
contained that tradition has been broken, but 
the germinal principle has been scattered rather 
widely around the world. I think that the book 
has coherence, because the theme is the principle 
of democratic control. It is this principle which 
is shattering the caste system, reconstructing 
industry, emancipating women, stirring Ireland, 
seething through the colonies, making England 
an industrial democracy, and transforming the 
far-flung empire into the British commonwealth. 

I think I have made plain that the program of 
reconstruction is far from victorious attainment. 
The woman's movement bristles with imanswered 
questions. Labor has failed to develop its ex- 
perts and leaders, and when it does, there remains 
the intricate problem of democratic control, with 
a set of experts sitting at the inner wheels. Free- 
dom is a hard taskmaster. And deeper yet is the 
351 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

problem of what excellence shall be made of the 
life that is free. 

I am painfully aware of failure in giving my 
account. I have had to use only three years of 
observation and five months of writing on what 
ought to be the work of a lifetime. It was my 
wish to keep the record free from praise or blame, 
and to let it tell of principles and tendencies in a 
community of great variety. But to my own 
knowledge I have often failed to capture what is 
characteristic. There is something perdurable 
and continuing about British character. No 
outer violence can shake the citadel of the individ- 
ual soul. The Briton is not only willing to die 
in what is plainly a great matter, such as the 
freeing of Belgium, he is wilhng to be laughed 
at and to be put into prison for his private pet 
behef. He interrupts public meetings and de- 
poses leaders if the speaker or the representative 
outpaces the plain man's view of what is common 
sense. There is no British type. There are 
many types, and then, in between the composite, 
a multitude of "infinitely repellent particles." 
That individualism, which was in the race in 
Chaucer's time, and again found record in Ben 
352 



VALE 

Jonson*s "The Man of Humour," has never died, 
and no "collective will" or state control will ever 
rob the British democracy of the salt and tang of 
its variety, the loud protest of its protestants and 
the dissidence of its dissent. So I have rendered 
official stupidities with Ireland and the Russian 
refugees. But the final trutli does n't rest there. 
I remember a talk I had with the mayor of the 
largest sea-coast resort, and how he told me of 
returning a German lad to his home-country after 
the war broke out. There is a kindliness in the 
race. Many times I have been irritated by some- 
thing pig-headed and unconsciously arrogant in 
the people, the quality which Havelock Ellis 
describes when he says, "It is the temper of a 
vigorous, independent, opinionated, free-spoken, 
yet sometimes suspicious people among whom 
every individual feels in himself the impulse to 
rule." It springs from the tradition of a govern- 
ing class, and I once heard one of the most famous 
men in Europe tell how a certain English noble- 
man always made him feel: "You belong to a 
race which we once ruled. Really, we ought to 
be ruling you now." Then there comes to me the 
intimate talk I recently had with a librarian. 
353 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

"For five generations my family has been in 
the pubhc service," he said, "and I could not be 
happy elsewhere. I receive five hundred pounds 
a year. Recently, a business house offered me 
nine hundred pounds, with the promise of promo- 
tion. But I could not be happy in other work. 
We do not want mone}^ primarily, so long as 
there is security, and enough for a decent living, 
and a pension, perhaps, at the end of it all. 
What can money offer compared with public 
service?" 

That is the secret of what is best in English 
life: the finest men in pubhc service, a level of 
conduct, clean administration and government. 
The democracy must never lower that standard. 

For the opportunity of meeting the moving 
spirits of the reconstruction, the leaders of labor, 
welfare work, the woman's movement, cabinet 
ministers, writers, officials, I owe grateful thanks 
to H. N. Spalding, Seebohm Rowntree, and 
Geoffrey Butler. They were tireless in effecting 
new connections for me, unaware that they them- 
selves were among the most valuable of the group 
whom I met. And from the many talks I have 
354 



VALE 

seemed to verify what I have long believed — that 
the British people are a great democratic force 
in the world. I believe that in accomplished 
reform they are a generation ahead of the United 
States, and that they see more clearly than we the 
immense responsibilities which the principle of 
democratic control creates. 

I am convinced that our own future is bound 
up with that of England, that together with Eng- 
land and France we can face the world with 
security, and gradually and painfully make the 
democratic principle prevail. I am convinced 
that, divided, both England and America will be 
fatally weakened, and that the future will be 
poorer because of the split. What is needed is 
interpretation of each country to the other, lead- 
ing to intellectual understanding, and finally to 
good-will. For that common understanding I 
consider it of importance that England shall con- 
quer a certain arrogance, a certain unwillingness 
to accept us as grown-up, and that she shall clear 
the Irish situation. For that common under- 
standing I consider it of equal importance that 
America should cease her policy of aloofness, and 
355 



INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES 

overcome the self-complacency which believes that 
our country alone is the land of freedom and 
justice and the champion of democracy. Then, 
together, in humility, we can achieve greatness, 
and extend the principle of democratic control. 



366 



APPENDIX 

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT 

In an outline of the new imperial commonwealth to which 
Lord Milner has given his approval the functions of the im- 
perial parliament are suggested: 

The first of these is the support and maintenance of the navy 
and naval establishments and fortifications throughout the empire. 
The second is the control of the expeditionary army and the main- 
tenance of a skeleton military establishment for the empire by which 
the national-service militias that must certainly follow this war 
could be gunned, mobilized, and directed in an imperial crisis. 
The third is the imperial control of the food-supply and of the 
imperial resources of raw material. The fourth is imperial transit, 
posts, money, standards, ports, and seaways. The fifth is the com- 
mon imperial trade policy. The sixth is the supreme direction of 
education, not with any power of prohibition, but with unlimited 
powers of endowment, to maintain the common language and the 
supply of higher education universally throughout the empire. 
The seventh is the maintenance of the supreme court of the empire. 
The eighth is the control of foreign policy and the continuation 
of the imperial trusteeship over the non-represented dependencies. 

THE LABOR COLLEGE 

The modern British radical is a man in command of the 
figures in his industry. His wage demand is not a blank 
check drawn against the full productive power of industry. 
It is an exact statement of the amount of cash which the 
employer has just put into his own pocket. This type of 
worker is perfectly willing to hold a conference on the basis 
of a show-down of facts. This mental clarity is not true 
357 



APPENDIX 

of the mass of labor, but it is true of the advanced groups. 
Education has been at work and has given them an intel- 
lectual basis for their desires. Those desires, expressed in 
the form of demands, are less noisy and more deadly than 
the old class-conscious battle-cries. There is an atmosphere 
of smokeless powder to the syndicalist movement in the 
hands of the miners, railwaymen, and engineers. 

An admirable study of this intellectual ferment in the 
South Wales coal-fields has been recently made by a spe- 
cial correspondent of "The Times." He shows how the 
miners, when they tackle Lord Rhondda and the other 
barons of the collieries, figure out costs from statistics, and 
challenge their management to a joint audit. In describ- 
ing the careful preparation which these men have received, 
he says: 

What is it that makes South Wales the industrial storm-center 
of Great Britain and why is it a fruitful ground for food agita- 
tion and peace propaganda? The answer is simple. Subject a 
fiery and educated people to a soulless, dehumanized, commercial 
machine for the extraction of gold out of labor, and you will 
inevitably breed a seething discontent which must somewhere find 
its outlet. 

Their fieriness is suflSciently known, but the Celtic temperament 
alone does not explain their violence of action. To it is added a 
degree of education which would astonish some of their absentee 
employers. There are scores of men working in the Welsh pits who 
could pass an examination in Ibsen or Shaw or Swinburne, or 
could bold their own in an argument on economics or politics with 
the average member of Parliament. They owe their training, not 
to the state or to the municipalities, but to the educational 
facilities provided by the Independent Labor Party and other 
organizations. In the current number of the "Merthyr Pioneer,'' 
which may be regarded as the organ of the Independent Labor 
Party movement in South Wales, appears a column and a half 
article, one of a series, on industrial history, dealing with the 
earliest written records of British history from the point of view 
358 



APPENDIX 

of the worker, and at the end of the article is a reference to the 
works which bear on the subject. For years past free evening 
classes in economics, industrial history, and similar subjects have 
been held in I. L. P. branch-rooms in the various mining centers, 
and many of the younger members have taken full advantage of 
them. 

There is another educational movement which has its center in 
Rhondda, and which is carried on mainly by past students of the 
Central Labor College. This institution, it may be remembered, 
was established as the result of dissatisfaction with the cur- 
riculum of Ruskin College, Oxford. From Oxford it was trans- 
ferred to Earl's Court, London, and thence it has spread the doc- 
trine of class war far and wide. Recently it came under the 
joint control of the South Wales Miners' Federation and the 
National Union of Railwaymen, and special efforts are now being 
made to extend its work throughout this district, chiefly by lec- 
tures in the workmen's institutes and cooperative societies' rooms. 

A third educational agency is an organization called the Plebs 
League, which aims at the education of the workers by means of 
classes in sociology, industrial history, Marxian economics, and so 
on. Not only do hundreds of young miners absorb this teaching, 
but many of them are sent by their lodges to the Central Labor 
College, London, and come back to preach what they have learned 
— mainly as a gospel of open hostility to the employers and con- 
stant agitation for the complete extraction of their profits. 

The Central Labor College, described above, is an insti- 
tution in the west of London, one of the heads of which 
has been Mrs. Bridges Adams. Mrs. Adams is an interna- 
tional Socialist, who has made a lifelong study of education. 
She and others founded Bebel House in London, which 
was to be one of the headquarters of the international so- 
cialist movement. Then came the war, and Bebel House 
was used by the refugee Russians as a headquarters. The 
police raided it during one of their stupid official campaigns 
against Russian political refugees. Mrs. Adams has waged 
a continuous and at last a successful fight against the Eng- 
lish official betrayal of the right of asylum. I give a full 
359 



APPENDIX 

account of the matter in the chapter entitled "The Right of 
Asylum." The point is of interest here as showing how 
various expressions of radicalism interlock. The woman 
who has helped the miners of South Wales to fashion the 
weapons of their powerful syndicalist movement is the per- 
son who has defended an ancient English liberty. 

Mrs. Adams believes that little trust can be put in labor 
leaders. They grow official, tame and compromising, and 
lose responsiveness to the aspirations of the mass of the 
people. She believes that only by diffused intelligence 
will the labor movement prosper, and not through individual 
men becoming under secretaries, pension minister, and min- 
ister of labor. And this distrust of labor leaders she ex- 
tends to university movements for "the education of the 
workers." She fears that they will make the social move- 
ment "upper class," and the education itself a desiccated, 
carefully edited non-explosive brand. So Mrs. Adams and 
others have conducted the Central Labor College as an in- 
stitution growing out of the people themselves rather than 
something given them from above. Step by step with the 
growth of her institution and other democratic agencies of 
education the Welsh miners have raised their standard of 
living and strengthened their position in the community, 
till to-day they are a force so formidable that the Gov- 
ernment capitulated on their latest threat to strike, and 
enforced a wage increase. They are probably the most 
radical labor group in Great Britain. 

LAND 

The Duke of Sutherland has decided to sell his Shrop- 
shire seat, Lilleshall, an estate of 7500 acres. 
In a letter to the tenants the Duke writes: 
I have hoped against hope that I might not be forced to part 

360 



APPENDIX 

with what remains of the Lilleshall Estate, but the burden of taxa- 
tion, which I think is heaviest on a landlord whose patrimony con- 
sists mainly of large landed properties, and particularly the very 
heavy death duties consequent on the death of my father, have 
compelled me to take this step. The prospect of a severance 
from the property and old association, which have become so dear 
to me, is a bitter one. 

The war has delayed much good reform which was 
briskly on its way. A long campaign to bring man and 
land together was about to end in remedial legislation. 
Now these reforms have been postponed till peace comes. 
But legislation will be introduced after the close of the war 
to bring labor back to the land, and to bring the land back 
from grass. The famous "New Doomsday" inquiry showed 
that slightly more than 2000 persons owned half the agri- 
cultural land of the country. 

While that investigation was being made the agricultural labor- 
ers were struggling to combine for higher wages, and their union 
was shortly afterwards crushed by farmers, clergy and landowners. 
As yet little has been done to efface the deep impress made alike 
upon the land system and the workers on the land by two hundred 
years of rule by the British landed aristocracy. 

Ninety per cent, of the agricultural land of England 
and Wales is worked by tenants and not by owners. The 
net agricultural output of England and Wales is about 
$650,000,000 a year. The land is under-cultivated. 

The Government appointed The Land Inquiry Committee 
to find out why. Their report was brought in only a few 
months before the war. The changes they advocate were 
thus postponed. 

The Committee found that one reason of under-cultiva- 
tion is the insecurity of tenure of the farmer. The grow- 
ing frequency of sales of agricultural estates, with notices 
to quit, or a higher rent, has led to this insecurity of the 
361 



APPENDIX 

small holder. This insecurity of tenure prevents the tenant 
from making improvements. He deserves compensation for 
increased fertility due to continuous good farming. In- 
stead, he often is shackled with a higher rent for his own 
improvements, and under the present system of taxation 
these improvements are rated and therefore penalized. 

Another reason is labor. Bad farming and low wages 
together have driven many of the best men to the towns. 
Those who remain as laborers are underpaid. 

A large amount of land is withheld from its best use for 
the purpose of sport, and a considerable amount more is 
under-cultivated and in some cases under-rented owing to 
game preservation. This land, instead of providing food 
for the people, provides sport and delicacies for the few. 
Between 1881 and 1901, the number of game-keepers in- 
creased from 12,633 to 16,677, while during the same pe- 
riod there was a large decline in the rural population. 
There are instances of agricultural land, formerly rated at 
20 shillings or more an acre, turned into plantation, and 
then rated at one shilling an acre, including the sporting 
right. In such cases the law has put a premium upon mis- 
using the land. Reforms are necessary in taxation and 
rating of this land used for sport. 

Other reasons for under-cultivation follow: Land lies 
waste. The farmer can not obtain adequate capital nor 
facile credit. Better transit by light railways, waterways, 
etc., is needed. Cooperation is still imperfectly practised. 
Scientific education is required. Much of the land must be 
split into small holdings. Too much land is in pasture in- 
stead of tillage. Even in dairy farming, "more cows could 
be maintained, and, if they are properly managed, more 
profit obtained, on an arable farm than on a grass farm." 
The "Nation" has reduced the total area in England and 



APPENDIX 

Wales under crops and grass to the scale of 48 acres, and, 
according to the latest agricultural returns, shown its divi- 
sion. Twenty-nine acres are in permanent grass, five acres 
clover and rotation grasses, 14 acres arable. 

The Government Committee came to this revolutionary 
conclusion : 

The ownership of land is of the nature of a monopoly, and the 
legal power which a landowner has over his tenant, tempered 
though It be in many cases by goodwill and kindly personal rela- 
tionship, is detrimental to the best national interests. . . . England 
has become, more than any other European nation, a country of 
farms of over 50 acres as opposed to Small Holdings. Nearly 
7,000,000 acres are in the hands of large farmers who hold more 
than 300 acres, while only 4,000,000 are in holdings between 5 and 
30, and only 285,000 acres are in holdings between 1 and 5 acres. 

Small holdings are one of the remedies. English expe- 
rience shows conclusively, according to these Government 
investigators, that small holders would rather rent than pur- 
chase. Their report is unfavorable to state-aided pur- 
chase. They found that the desire to purchase is not for 
any abstract joy of ownership, but almost universally for 
the factor of obtaining security of tenure. An inquiry was 
made among farmers. Eighty per cent, stated that they 
wished security of tenure, only 7I/0 per cent said that their 
real object was the satisfaction of ownership. So the rem- 
edy proposed is to create security of tenure, rather than 
peasant proprietorship. It should be said that there is a 
wide difference of public opinion on this point of small 
rented holding versus peasant proprietorship. The Com- 
mittee sees that one of the fundamentals in the matter is 
that the man with only a small capital needs a good return 
on his money. Land as an investment pays back only about 
3 per cent. This is too small a return for the farmer. He 

363 



APPENDIX 

will do better to rent his holding, and invest his money in 
seed, fertilizer and machinery. Land is more costly than 
its agricultural value warrants because there is a demand 
for it for social and sporting purjjoses. 

The Committee urges that Land Courts shall be es- 
tablished in England and Wales with powers to grant se- 
curity of tenure subject to good farming, to fix fair rents, 
to decide questions of compensations, and to fix the price 
payable upon compulsory acquisition of land by public bod- 
ies. The existence of this Land Court will hasten the ac- 
quisition of land by public bodies for small holdings. 

Ordinary agricultural laborers in England make an aver- 
age around $4'.20 a week. There is little opposition to the 
proposal that a legal minimum wage shall be established for 
them by a wage tribunal. This wage must be such as will 
enable the laborer to live in a state of physical efficiency 
and to pay a commercial rent for his cottage. 

For his bad condition is partly due to bad housing. The 
number of cottages for the working class in the rural dis- 
tricts of England and Wales is about 1,200,000. One hun- 
dred and twenty thousand new cottages are needed, espe- 
cially cottages with three bedrooms. By " bad housing in 
rural districts thousands of children and adults are dying 
or being permanently injured in health every year. ... It 
should be made a definite statutory duty of every Rural 
District Council to provide a cottage for every person 
permanently employed in a rural district." 

By thus increasing the independence of the laborer, he 
will be in a position to take advantage of the existent Small 
Holdings and Allotments Act. This, combined with better 
machinery, through Parish Councils and Government of- 
ficials, will secure the use of a small piece of land for every 
dweller in the countryside. In that way the ladder is built 

364. 



APPENDIX 

by which he rises from a landless underpaid wage-slave to 
a free householder with access to the land. 

It is further advocated that the Crown Land Commis- 
sioners purchase large areas of land in different parts of 
the country for the purpose of extending their policy of 
creating small holdings. 

Who is to pay for the minimum wage of labor and the 
reduced rent of small holdings .'' The landlord^ not the 
farmer. The legislation for a minimum wage is to provide 
that the farmer who pays it and who is able to prove that 
the rise in wages has put upon him an increased burden 
shall have the right to apply to the Land Court for a re- 
adjustment of his rent. And that rent, in any case, is to 
be a fair rent and not a competitive rent. 

"A competitive rent is the sum which one farmer, com- 
peting with other farmers, will pay for land rather than go 
without it. A fair rent is the surplus which in a normal 
season will remain over from the produce of the land if 
worked by a farmer of average ability, after providing for 
all necessary outgoings, including a fair wage to the laborer, 
and after allowing to the farmer a reasonable remunera- 
tion." 

In these ways, bad housing, over-crowding, malnutrition, 
tuberculosis will be done away with in the life of the la- 
borer, and the land itself freed for community service. In 
the reform, two points of view will be kept in mind — "The 
social point of view, which looks on the health and housing 
of the laborer and the poorer villager; the economic point 
of view which treats agriculture as an industry that must 
be run at a profit." 

It is historically just that the landowner shall stand a 
portion of the burden of reform. Dr. Gilbert Slater has 
outlined the process by which the self-respecting English 

365 



APPENDIX 

peasantry were forced off the land. By rack rents (an 
economic rent based on rising values^ as distinguished from 
the customary rent), by a system of fines, the landlords 
appropriated to themselves the whole of the new profits 
of changed conditions through world commerce. The ten- 
ants resigned their holdings into the hands of the landlord. 
The arable land was turned into sheep farms, evictions were 
widely made, and a thriving village would be replaced by 
"ruined cottages, and rough grass nibbled by flocks, running, 
we are told, in some cases to as many as 24,000 sheep, 
tended by a few shepherds and their dogs. This was the 
great enclosure movement of the sixteenth century." 

Enclosure was not the turning of waste lands into culti- 
vated fields, but the conversion of arable fields into desolate 
sheep walks. 

"Early in the eighteenth century began the series of 
private acts of enclosure, of which 4000 in all, covering 
7,000,000 acres, were passed before the General Enclosure 
Act of 1845. During the same period it is probable that 
about the same area was enclosed without application to 
Parliament. ... In a proportion of cases, the principal 
landowner effected enclosure by first of all making him- 
self the sole proprietor." 

Enclosure meant throwing open fields together and build- 
ing a hedge around the total. In this way the small owners 
were got rid of. "The majority of the small tenant farm- 
ers had to choose between emigrating elsewhere, or becom- 
ing landless laborers. . . . Henceforward there was a gulf 
between the laborer and the farmer." 

EMPIRE RESOURCES 

I have to limit myself to a sentence for programs of re- 
construction, each of which would require a volume for ade- 
S66 



APPENDIX 

quate summary. The linking up of the resources of the 
empire is a vast scheme, with a committee already at work 
upon it. The empire resources development committee has 
been formed to open up new sources of revenue by develop- 
ing the empire through state aid to private enterprise. 
Selected resources, assets ripe for development. Land, 
palm-oil products, fisheries are among its immediate agenda. 
Land will be sold or leased, and will also be used as an 
instrument of production, for stock-raising, and the estab- 
lishment of plantations. Water-supplies, railways, har- 
bors, grain-elevators, and factories are all envisaged in the 
scheme. The development board is to be constituted of cap- 
tains of industry. Among the men backing the plan are 
Rudyard Kipling, Sir Horace Plunkett, Dunraven, Grey, 
Selborne Desborough, and Sir Starr Jameson. 

It is impossible for the empire to pay off its enormous 
war debt under the existing system of taxation. Demo- 
cratic finance has to strike out new ideas, and this is one 
of them: to make use of the "finest undeveloped estate 
which has ever been known in the history of the world," 
and to develop these latent resources of the empire by a 
centralized semi-state board, making use of the services of 
experts. This organization will thus be a commercial 
pioneer, supplying capital and knowledge, control and or- 
ganization, to the scattered pockets and pools and paying 
veins of the ungarnered wealth of a quarter of the earth. 

Alfred Bigland, who has had forty years of experience 
in the importation of raw materials, says of the plan: 

Some time ago the Minister of Munitions asked me to take 
charge of all oils that contained glycerine and he pointed out the 
Government controlled the whole of the whale fishing in the 
Antarctic Ocean. By giving licenses to the men to fish in these 
waters on condition that the oil was retained for this country we 
have received during the war 660,000 barrels of this oil. It was 

367 



APPEXDIX 

a revelation that vre had such a supply, and while the Germans 
were paying, for little lots, £300 a ton for such oil, we are buying 
it for the Government at £3S a ton. 

In the Pacific Ocean, bordering on British Columbia; in the 
moutli of the St. Lawrence; and the waters around Newfound- 
land and Labrador, apart from our own home waters — under an 
Empire monopoly (though we must have the consent of tlie 
dominions in tliis matter), we could become the purveyors of fish 
in all forms, almost to the whole world. Already Newfoundland 
was sending on an average 300,000 tons of cod to the Mediter- 
ranean and neutral countries. There was practically no limit to 
the quantity, and the Grand Trunk Pacific had already offered 
refrigerating plant to bring fish from Prince Rupert Island to 
Liverpool at a penny a ton, whicli would be reduced to three 
fartiiings or a halfpenny on big Government contracts being en- 
tered into. This development could take place immediately. The 
necessary shipbuilding and equipment must take time, but after 
the war — if the Government allowed it — the whole of the vessels 
now used in the North Sea for mine sweeping and other purposes 
would fonii the nucleus of an Empire fishing fleet. The quantity 
of fish consumed in tliis country was 600,000 tons a year, which 
was equal to one-fortieth of the total food consumed per head 
of the population, and the scheme might increase the fish supply 
to at least four times that quantity. 

It will take ten years to develop the ideas the committee wish 
to carry out. it must be apparent to every one that no private 
individual could accomplish such a great work in the way that 
an Empire Council could do. There was the objection that it 
would be Socialistic for the State to carry on such a business; but 
the committee would begin where vested interests were the least 
in force — except as regarded the fishermen engaged in the business 
— and that was in the bed of the ocean. All on board the fishing 
vessels, from the captain to the lowest man. should participate in 
the proceeds of the catches. If the State secured a penny a 
pound, which was £9 6s. a ton, it would he quite possible to make 
a gross profit in 10 years of £36,000,000, out of which the sinking 
fund for the development charges must be met It would be for 
the State to regulate the prices in every town in the country; 
and the State should have the control of the home fisheries as 
well. 

368 



APPENDIX 

Sir William Lever has stated that an expenditure of ten 
thousand dollars in bringing two hundred acres of cocoa- 
nut-palms to maturity may be estimated to give an income 
of ten thousand dollars an acre in about ten years. So it 
will be an immense source of income for the state to de- 
velop the vast imperial holdings of palm-lands, which prob- 
ably amount to several million acres. 

WHO DOES THE WORK? 

The question has been often asked. How has it been pos- 
sible to take out four million men and still carry on the 
productive industries of Great Britain.'' 

The clearest shortest answer to this has been given by 
Sir Leo Chiozza Money: 

(1) The men remaining have, as a whole, produced more than 
in peace. 

(2) There has been a better organization of production in some 
trades, notably the engineering trades. 

(3) Large amounts of new capital have been applied by the 
Government to many important industries. 

(4) There has been a removal of restrictions upon output. 

(5) Many women have taken up productive work for the first 
time. 

(6) There has been a great contraction of the vast amount of 
male labor normally employed upon non-productive and uneconomic 
work; in some cases the unnecessary work has disappeared alto- 
gether; in others it has been taken up and is now performed by 
women or girls. 

He goes on to say: 

Before the war a very large proportion of our male workers 
were engaged in non-productive work. All our mines, quarries, 
mills, factories, and workshops employed only 414 million men. 
But our male population aged eighteen years and upwards num- 
bered thirteen millions. Therefore it was true that OF OUR 
MALE POPULATION AGED EIGHTEEN YEAPtS AND 

369 



APPENDIX 

OVER ONLY ABOUT ONE IN THREE WAS ENGAGED 
DIRECTLY IN PRODUCING INDUSTRIAL WEALTH. 

What were all the rest doing? Distribution, education. Govern- 
ment service, commerce, etc., are all important, but can it be 
possible that two out of three males — to say nothing of females 
— were needed to carry them on, as compared with only one in 
three devoted to producing things ? Most certainly the devotion of 
so large a proportion of males to non-productive tasks was not only 
unnecessary, but a sign and a portent of industrial decadence. 

The taliing of men from non-productive employments has en- 
abled women very easily to make substitution in many cases. 
A woman works the lift which before the war was worked by an 
able-bodied man, doing work which no able-bodied man should ever 
do. The laundry van, which before the war was driven by an 
able-bodied man, is now driven by a girl. You go to the bank and 
see capable young women dealing with the books and papers which 
yesterday were supposed to demand the services of stalwart young 
men. 

At the insurance offices, which before the war employed a great 
army of young men, girls find no difficulty in accomplishing the 
work. At the offices of the National Health Insurance Com- 
missioners the work is being done by girls quite as well as by 
the battalion or so of men who recently were thought to be needed 
for it. In tens of thousands of commercial. Government, and 
local government offices female labor is doing what the other year 
was thought to be men's work. 

The idea, therefore, that because a man was a petty clerk, or 
a shop assistant, or a lift-man, or a driver, or a door-opener, 
or a tout, or a commission agent, or something of that sort, before 
the war, he must necessarily go back to his old job, while the 
woman who has taken his job is to return to her old work, is 
entirely mistaken. 

Organize our power supply; reform our railway system; set to 
work on a decent canal system; determine production in the 
metal trades and the chemical trades; enlarge our wheat area 
definitely and compulsorily. Do these things, and there will be 
such a call for labor in connection with them, and in connection 
with other useful employments arising from them, that in peace as 
in war, we shall find that the difficulty is not to find jobs for the 
men, but to find men for the jobs. 

370 



APPENDIX 



THE CHURCH 

The City Temple, the leading Noncomformist church 
of England, believing that "the brotherhood of the 
ti'enches" might be extended to the Christian church, invited 
Dean Henson of Durham Cathedral, belonging to the 
Church of England, to preach in the City Temple pulpit. 
The dean consented. On January 31, 1917, "The Times" 
reports : 

The York branch of the Yorkshire District Union of the English 
Church Union yesterday discussed the Dean of Durham's intention 
to preach in the City Temple. The Rev. P. J. Shaw, rector of All 
Saints', North-street, York, moved a resolution deploring the 
intention of Dean Henson, which he described as a flagrant viola- 
tion of Church order and discipline. The motion was carried. 

COMPULSORY DEMOCRACY 

Mr. Balfour has stated the present concentration of 
effort in clear terras : 

All we can do for the war is to produce men to fight, men and 
women to work at warlike munitions, men and women to work at 
those commodities that we can export and with which we can buy 
abroad other munitions of war. If you divert by your expenditure 
national energies into wrong channels, by so much you are divert- 
ing resources on which we depend for finishing the war and end- 
ing it with a successful peace. 

Let us transpose that into its equivalent for normal life. 

All we can do for the welfare of the community is to produce 
happy and healthy persons to live a creative life, men and women 
to work at productive industries, men and women to work at those 
commodities that we can export and with which we can buy abroad 
other products for the creation of a life of reasonable satisfaction. 
If, by your expenditure on personal luxury or by your investment 
of capital on non-productive trades, you divert national energies 
into wrong channels, by so much you are diverting resources on 

371 



APPENDIX 

which we depend for establishing a high standard of living for 
the community, and so finishing the labor war and ending it with 
a successful peace. 

The principle of organization and concentration, backed 
by compulsion, in the interests of the community has for 
the first time in English history been widely applied. 
Once applied, it becomes permanent, and is subject to ex- 
tension. The compulsion has been used to force men to go 
and die. It has been used to make them work at certain 
jobs at a fixed rate of pay and to give up other jobs. But 
it has not been used, except in "controlled" firms and in a 
limited way, to take control of profits, and it has not been 
used to force capital to invest in one enterprise and not in 
another. A man's life is not his own, his power of work 
is not his own; but his money, if he is wealthy, is his own. 
He can invest it in making absinthe; he can lend it to 
an exploiter of African labor; he can create an anti-so- 
cial industry with it. One needs only to state it for its 
absurdity to be seen. Capital will be increasingly governed 
as labor is already governed. When political democracy 
was formed, it was inevitable that industrial democracy 
would result, however tardily. So it is with any partial ap- 
plication of a principle. Once it begins to operate, it grad- 
ually extends itself over the full area of its function. The 
principle of compulsion, applied to the life and labor of men, 
will a little later reach property, that last sacred strong- 
hold of privilege. 

These changes are more searching than the direct changes 
by death and wastage of the war, but it is the war that has 
hastened them. "The success of this revolution was chiefly 
due to the wisdom of those who alloA^ed it to develop grad- 
ually and almost imperceptibly from existing institutions." 

372 



APPENDIX 

COOPERATION, SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 

Private capitalism, in its old terms of unchecked proiit- 
eering and laissez-faire exploitation, has already been 
scrapped as a method of organizing industry. Individual- 
ism, with its instinct for property, will of course survive in 
many forms. Thus in agriculture we are to-day seeing a 
powerful movement toward the private ownership of prop- 
erty, and that property, instead of being held in a few 
hands, will be widely distributed. The restoration of peas- 
ant-land proprietorship in Ireland is an instance. The 
movement toward tenant holdings in England and Wales 
is another instance. 

But industrial England is looking to other solutions than 
individualism for the mass of her workers, and has already 
put those solutions into partial operation. One of those 
solutions is democratic control of industry by the workers. 
That means precisely that associations of producers (trade- 
unions and guilds) will exercise control over the conditions 
of their work. I have outlined this solution in the chapter 
on "The Discovery." It is the solution by syndicalism. 

The other solution is the control of industry by associa- 
tions of consumers. Those associations are voluntary, as 
in cooperation, and compulsory, as in state and municipal 
ownership. This is the solution by cooperation and social- 
ism. There is no difference in principle between coopera- 
tion and socialism, but there is a sharply marked differ- 
ence in the area of application. 

Every solution, whether by association of producers or by 
association of consumers, needs the check and balance of 
the other. The syndicalist will exploit the consumer by high 
prices and over-emphasis on the social value of his own 
particular trade. The cooperator and state socialist will 

373 



APPENDIX 

exploit the worker in order to get products at a low price, 
and state socialism builds a powerful bureaucracy of expert 
officials, who form an oligarchy inside the democracy. The 
ineradicable instinct for property will temper both move- 
ments, and Parliament will remain one of the direct ex- 
pressions of the people's wish between these contending 
forces, and will continue to act as a corrective of modern 
government, which is government by cabinet and committee, 
leaning increasingly toward state socialism. In short, no 
one movement or tendency fully expresses democracy, 
which must use each in carefully controlled degree. The 
method of that control is the problem of the future. The 
cabinet and the bureaucracy have meanwhile grown strong, 
and Parliament has weakened. In the future no one tend- 
ency inside the social movement is likely to be the Aaron's 
rod and swallow up the contending tendencies, though so- 
cialists, syndicalists, and cooperators make the same whole- 
hearted claims for their pet solution that advocates of big 
business, free trade, and empire development make. Out 
of all these powerful "pushes" will come a resultant, a 
collision into harmony, which will be the new order, the 
reconstructed community, the organized state under demo- 
cratic control. 

A figure will make this clear. In the warfare in France 
and Flanders there is a series of separate spaces that can 
be made untenable for the enemy. There are the differing 
zones of shrapnel and of infantry fire and a space between 
them, and that space belongs to the machine-gun. There 
is a similar division of effective function in the attack on 
the capitalistic system. There is an area that the municipal 
and governmental control of industry does not reach, and a 
portion (not the whole) of that area is reached by the co- 
operative movement. There is a further area reached by 

374 



APPENDIX 

syndicalism. In the near future at least there will be left 
much "dead ground" of which private enterprise will still 
alone have the range. 

Thus in the most careful study ever made of the co- 
operative movement, the report of the committee of the 
Fabian Research Department, the possible extent of the an- 
nual trade of the movement is put at "something like four 
to five hundred millions sterling, being only one-fifth of 
the total national production." Also, cooperation "offers 
in itself nothing in the nature of a complete solution of the 
problem of the status of the workers." 

And so with the limitations of public ownership. Some 
of the coming trouble will be a fight of syndicalism against 
state socialism. The state, as manager of industry and 
employer of labor, operating through its bureaucracy of 
experts, will issue orders to its employees. They will 
claim the right to strike. Will they then be "called to the 
colors," as was done in the French syndicalist strike.^ 
Will the troops be ordered out against them, as is done in 
Colorado, Illinois, and Pennsylvania.^ Is the right to 
strike to be taken from government employees? If so, 
the socialistic state will become an oligarchy of expert of- 
ficials possessing a tyrannical power. It will cease to be 
under democratic control. For the socialistic state is not 
the consummation of democracy ; it is only one expression of 
democracy. And syndicalism is another expression. To 
no one expression can the full power be safely handed 
over. 

What has cooperation in Great Britain done after sev- 
enty years of experience? It has established and has run- 
ning at the present time fifteen distributive stores, with 
three million members, controlling sales to the value of 
four hundred million dollars a year, and producing goods 

375 



APPENDIX 

to the value of seventy million dollars a year. The re- 
search committee summarizes the service of cooperation. It 
has ail'orded in manufacturing and in wholesale and retail 
trading an alternative of working-class origin to the capi- 
talist system. Manual workers have proved themselves 
capable of administering it under democratic control. It 
has steadily grown for seventy years. It has kept down 
retail prices, distributed millions of dollars as dividend on 
purchases, money that would have gone to the capitalist 
class. By cooperation the manual workers are receiving a 
training in the administration of self-governing industrial 
republics. Cooperation within its own area has done away 
with that specialized brain power known as directive con- 
trol, which consists in cunning for the defeat of rivals, 
under cutting, nibbling at wages, adulteration, cornering 
the market, promotion, stock-exchange gambling. A ten- 
dency in cooperation, as in socialism, is to put administra- 
tion into the hands of salaried officials. Thus the English 
Cooperative Wholesale Society has twenty-one thousand 
paid employees, directed by a salaried committe of thirty- 
two members. 

The business of cooperation is not likely to go far be- 
yond the articles consumed by that portion of the wage- 
earning class enjoying fairly regular employment and 
wages, together with the "black-coated proletariat" — clerks, 
petty officials, and the like. The submerged tenth are un- 
able to avail themselves of cooperation, and the one-eighth 
or one-tenth of the population known as the middle and 
upper classes do not care to avail themselves of it. But it 
is those other classes, from unskilled laborer to minor pro- 
fessionals, with incomes from $250 to $2000 a year, who 
are increasing in numbers and importance, and who are 
entering into control of the new social order. Cooperation 

376 



APPENDIX 

as an association of consumers will probably not touch the 
greater part of agriculture, the greater part of manufac- 
ture for foreign consumption, the industries providing ma- 
terial and plant for other industries, and those industries, 
like the post-office and the railway system, in which the 
day-by-day consumers do not constitute a suitable unit 
of administration, or in which administration by the com- 
pulsory machinery of national or municipal government 
is required. Accordingly, four-fifths of national produc- 
tion will remain outside the reach of cooperative organi- 
zation. Cooperation is not an alternative to the capitalist 
system for a majority of manual workers. It is an alterna- 
tive for a minority. 

What has socialism done.'' The summary' was given by 
the Fabian Research Committee in the late spring of 1915. 
Government has already become socialistic. It has out- 
grown its police power alone and has become an administra- 
tion of public services — housekeeping on a national scale. 
How are we to know the difference between governmental 
and capitalist enterprise? The test of whether adminis- 
tration in a given department and area is socialistic is 
whether any excess of receipts over cost of working goes 
not to the profit of the administrators or of any private 
owner or shareholders, but to public purposes. Down to 
a century ago government concerned itself with provision 
for religious rites, external defense, police, the adminis- 
tration of justice, and the maintenance of prisons, poor 
relief, regulation, inspection, audit, and taxation. Since 
then government has entered many fields. 

It has entered the domain of communication and trans- 
port, transmitting communications, conveying persons, and 
transporting commodities. This industry employs at 
least one-tenth of all the working population, and absorbs 

mi 



APPENDIX 

an expenditure of a thousand million dollars a year. This 
largest of all industries in its three functions is passing in- 
creasingly throughout the civilized world into governmental 
organization. Thus the inland conveyance of letters by 
private enterprise is to-day left to countries like Abyssinia, 
Afghanistan, and Arabia. 

The construction and maintenance of roads is virtually 
nowhere a service of private capitalism. The United 
Kingdom is now spending yearly nearly one hundred mil- 
lion dollars on thoroughfares, with approximately 100,000 
men constantly employed. 

Local authorities in Great Britain in 1913 were operat- 
ing 171 tramways as against one in 1881. In 1913 the 
municipal capital in tramways was $275,000,000. 

In waterways, embanking, lighting, watching, ports, the 
docks and quays are nearly everywhere provided and 
maintained by government. The capital outlay in Great 
Britain is over five hundred million dollars. 

Of the total railway mileage of the world, just about 
half is owned and worked entirely by government enter- 
prise. The railways of Great Britain have been in the 
hands of private capital, but during the war the Government 
has controlled them, and there is a powerful movement to- 
ward nationalizing them. This movement resulted a few 
weeks ago in nationalizing the railways of Ireland. 

In public health and sanitary work we see in local-govern- 
ment water undertakings of Great Britain twenty thousand 
men employed, and a thousand million dollars administered 
in premises, plant, and machinery. 

The removal of house refuse, city drainage, and street 
sweeping are increasingly governmental services. 

Public baths, public laundries, and swimming-pools repre- 

378 



APPENDIX 

sent a municipal investment in Great Britain of twenty-five 
million dollars. 

State medical service is steadily spreading: doctoring for 
the destitute, governmental insurance systems, public med- 
ical service in universities, hospitals, asylums, schools, pris- 
ons, health departments, workhouses, army, navy, police, 
post-office. Nurses, chemists, and doctors are rapidly be- 
coming the officers of the community. Where already per- 
haps one hundred thousand of them are in public institu- 
tions and government departments the rest will shortly be. 

In land improvement, there are already over three hun- 
dred local commissioners of sewers, spending about two and 
a half million dollars a year. Several million dollars a 
year are spent in India in new irrigation canals, in improv- 
ing the network of water-channels, in banking river chan- 
nels. At this moment Ireland requires an expenditure of 
a few million dollars to drain her bogs, set her river-levels, 
and establish an irrigation system. 

Public education, recreation, parks, libraries, music, 
dances, piers, museums, art galleries, government books and 
other printed matter, are all employing men and women 
and absorbing capital. The printing bill of the British 
Government alone is over five million dollars a year. 

Banking facilities are passing under governmental con- 
trol. Metallic coinage and the issue of paper money are 
state services. Bfitish post-office savings-bank deposits and 
trustee savings-bank deposits amount to twelve hundred 
and fifty million dollars. The British Government lends 
money to land-owners, local authorities, public-utility socie- 
ties for agricultural improvements, drainage, and housing, 
and to the householder wishing to purchase his own home. 
In the purchase and sale of securities for customers the post- 
379 



APPENDIX 

master-general of Great Britain does a business of millions 
a year. In 1915 the British Government took under its 
control the investment of capital. In 1914< the Bank of 
England, as the agent of the British Government, pur- 
chased over five hundred million dollars of bills of ex- 
change. 

In light, heat, and power the same tendency toward state 
and municipal ownership is at work. Over three hundred 
gas undertakings in Great Britain are municipal, and the 
capital is two hundred and twenty-five million dollars. The 
Widnes town council claimed four years ago that at from 
sixteen to twenty-four cents per thousand cubic feet it was 
supplying gas, with a profit, cheaper than any other gas 
plant, governmental or capitalist, in the world. Nearly 
three hundred cities and towns in Great Britain are now 
supplied with light, heat, and power by the municipal elec- 
trical department, representing an investment of two hun- 
dred and fifty million dollars, annual gross receipts of over 
twenty millions, and employing about twenty thousand per- 
sons. 

Government has gone in for housing, building farm- 
laborers' cottages in Ireland, municipal lodging-houses in 
Great Britain, tenement blocks in London and Liverpool, 
and developing suburbs. As I show in the report of the 
Land Inquiry committee, there is beginning a vast ex- 
tension of governmental rural cottage building, which will 
provide 120,000 new dwellings, or ten per cent, of the pres- 
ent number. 

One-sixth of British India is forest reserve, a tract of 
240,000 square miles, administered by the Government of 
India for the public benefit, producing a net revenue of teu 
million dollars a year. English municipalities are begin- 
ning to afforest their water-catchment areas. 

380 



APPENDIX 

The largest farmer in the United Kingdom is the Irish 
Government, where the congested districts board has 33,000 
rent-paying tenants and an average of a quarter of a mil- 
lion acres under its administration for stock and sale of 
produce. 

The mines in the United Kingdom have been under pri- 
vate ownership. But the Government recently took over 
the coal mines in South Wales, and this is probably the 
first step in the nationalization of most of the fields. Ire- 
land's prosperity will leap up if her coal-deposits are freed. 

There are many government enterprises in manufactur- 
ing industry, producing the articles required for public use, 
instead of purchasing them to the profit of private concerns. 
The municipality, with its tramway service, erects its own 
works and car-sheds, generates its electricity, builds and 
repairs its cars, prints its tickets. In England the post- 
office gets the bulk of its mail-sacks made by the prison de- 
partment. 

At this writing the British Government is considering tak- 
ing over the manufacture and sale of liquor, which will 
make it one of the greatest shopkeepers in the world. 

In the face of this summary of the research committee, 
it is theoretic to debate about the principle of socialism 
versus private capitalism. The tendency toward public 
ownership is under full swing, and no phrases can stop it. 
The committee quotes what a secretary for the colonies, 
Lewis Harcourt, said: 

In these days, the Colonial Office has more the attributes of an 
immense trading and administrative concern than those of earlier 
days, when it was a mere machine of Government. I am a coal 
and tin miner in Nigeria, a gold miner in Guiana. I seek timber 
in one colony, oil and nuts in another, cocoa in a third — copra 
and copal, sisal and hemp, cotton, coffee, tobacco are common ob- 
jects of my daily care. . . . My days and nights are spent in the 

381 



APPENDIX 

study of medicine, in the details of railway construction, with a 
desire that the smallest sum of money may lay the largest number 
of miles of track in the fewest possible days. 

Six years ago the census showed in government employ in 
England and Wales 788,550 persons, 299,599 in state de- 
partments and 588,951 under local authorities. It is rea- 
sonable to estimate that in the United Kingdom over one 
million are now in public employment, one-sixth of all 
gainfully employed persons. The Socialist or Labor parties 
can not fully claim this government action as the result of 
their propaganda. The bulk of this socialist enterprise has 
been initiated and carried out by persons of the aristocratic 
or propertied classes, by business men and experts, and 
middle-class residents. Men like Joseph Chamberlain 
were not "out" to introduce the cooperative commonwealth, 
though unconsciously they have hastened its coming. The 
reasons that have directly led to this spread of socialism 
show that the consideration in the creators of the policy 
was the interest of the community as a whole and the in- 
terest of the citizens as consumers. The test of the policy 
is not by theory, but by practice and experience. 

In four great fields both socialism and cooperation are 
as yet largely leaving the field to private capital. Those 
fields are: the special service of the idle rich, much of in- 
ternational trade and its finance, the unorganized portion 
of the shipping industry, and a large part of agriculture 
and fishing. And yet even in agriculture the coming leg- 
islation is leaning heavily toward what is virtually state con- 
trol; and in fishing the Empire Resources Development com- 
mittee are putting through a program which is socialistic. 

State and municipal ownership and management now 
administer in the United Kingdom seventy-five hundred 
million dollars of capital. The capital thus administered 

382 



APPENDIX 

and the volume of business thus done is probably a hundred 
times as great as that of cooperation, and is increasing with 
giant strides. This state and municipal socialism is most 
successful in communication and transport, land improve- 
ment, sanitation, and public health service, education and 
recreation, extraction of coal and other minerals, banking 
and insurance, manufacture and distribution of certain 
commodities, and the construction and preparation of arti- 
cles required in the public service. 

The enterprises of cooperation and of state and municipal 
socialism hardly ever compete with one another because 
their spheres are distinct. The Cooperative Society pro- 
duces and distributes mainly ordinary household supplies. 
Socialism has devoted itself to commodities and services un- 
suited to cooperation. This division of function will un- 
doubtedly long continue. 

The more a government engages in industrial functions as 
contrasted with functions merely of police and national 
defense, the more essentially democratic does its administra- 
tion tend to become. But as yet, parallel with what we 
have seen in cooperation, the humbler grades of employees 
in state and municipal service have as little influence on the 
management of their department and are as much governed 
from above as if they were in capitalist employment. 

On the other hand, in comparison with joint-stock cap- 
italism, government management of industry means ulti- 
mately a large number of independent employers and an 
increase in local control. And this because in practice there 
is a rapid growth of municipal enterprises, with a multipli- 
cation of separate employers. Whereas in capitalist enter- 
prise there is the supremacy of the national trust and 
combine, such as Lord Rhondda's in South Wales, over pri- 
vate industry, thus lessening the number of employers. 

383 



APPENDIX 

The extension of state and municipal management is rap- 
idly proceeding, and its potential area of control is almost 
illimitable. In these next years if those industries and 
services already governmentally administered in one place 
or another are generally brought under public administra- 
tion, the aggregate volume of state and municipal socialism 
will be increased probably five- or six-fold. Such an in- 
crease, without adding a single fresh industry or service to 
those already successfully nationalized or municipalized 
in one country or another, will probably bring into the 
service of national and local government an actual majority 
of the adult population. With cooperation developing along 
its own lines, the combination of socialism and cooperation 
will mean that probably three-fourths of all the world's in- 
dustrial capital will be under collective or non-capitalistic 
administration. 

Certain activities will long remain outside this extension 
of collective enterprise: certain branches of agriculture, 
art, invention, new markets, new individual enterprises. 
The future organization of industry and the state will there- 
fore include more than one form of control. There is need 
to secure for persons employed in cooperation, in govern- 
ment enterprise, and in private enterprise some real control 
over their own working lives. With that method of control 
I have dealt in the cliapter on "The Discovery." There is 
need, also, to secure for the users and consumers of par- 
ticular products and services some real power of influencing 
their production otherwise than by Parliament and the 
town council. 

Such are the conclusions of the research committee, which 
I have reproduced largely in their own words. Out of it 
all emerges the outline of the coming England, of social- 
ism, cooperation, syndicalism, big business, private property. 
384; 



APPENDIX 



WORKSHOP COUNCILS 

"Cards Freres" in Ghent, Belgium, had instituted a works 
committee before the war came. Questions of hours, piece 
rates, and discipline were dealt with. The disputes ceased, 
production increased, and higher wages were paid. 

WORKERS' CONTROL 

The Garton Foundation, of which Mr. Balfour, the Vis- 
count Esher and Sir Richard Garton are the trustees, has 
made a careful investigation of industrial conditions: 

Many of the men who return from the trenches to the great 
munition and shipbuilding centers are, within a few weeks of their 
return, among those who exhibit most actively their discontent with 
present conditions. Among those who have fought in Flanders 
or who have been employed in making shells at home, there are 
many who look forward to a great social upheaval following the 
war. It is the testimony of responsible observers on the spot that 
some of our greatest industrial centers are even now in a state of 
incipient revolt. To a very large number of the men now in the 
ranks, the fight against Germany is a fight against "Prussianism," 
and tlie spirit of Prussianism represents to them only an extreme 
example of that to which they object in the industrial and social 
institutions of their own country. They regard the present strug- 
gle as closely connected with the campaign against capitalist and 
class-domination at home. 

Unfortunately some of the results of the war itself, such as the 
Munitions Act and the Compulsion Acts, have intensified this 
identification of external and internal "enemies." We are not 
discussing the necessity of these measures. The point is that the 
working of these Acts and the Tribunals created under them has 
given rise to an amount of deep and widespread resentment which 
is the more dangerous because it is largely inarticulate. It is 
particularly dangerous because it tends to discredit in general 
working class opinion that section of Labor which looks to the 
improvement of industrial conditions by negotiation or by legisla- 
tive action, and to strengthen the hands of the party which 
preaches doctrines of wrecking and appropriation. 
885 



APPENDIX 

The war has not put an end to industrial unrest. Every one 
of the old causes of dispute remains, and others of a more 
serious nature have been added in the course of the war. The 
very moderation and unselfishness shown by the responsible lead- 
ers of Organized Labor are looked upon by important sections 
of their following as a betrayal of the cause and by some employers 
as a tactical opportunity. 

The employers know nothing of the effect of a new 
process on the nervous system of the worker. They know 
nothing of the fatigue from overwork or monotony. They 
make no study of a standard of living. They go blindly 
ahead, as if men and machinery, alike, were tools to be 
manipulated. That an aim of industry should be a good 
life for the worker is an idea which would sound strangely 
in the ears. The workers understand nothing of overhead 
charges, depreciation of plant, the risks of capital. They 
know nothing of the policy connected with buying and 
selling. 

Consider the analysis Sir Hugh Bell has recently made 
of his own costs, as given in the "Round Table" for Sep- 
tember, 1916: 

His firm makes steel, the raw materials for which are produced 
from his own coal and iron mines and limestone quarries. In 
every ton of steel made 70 to 73 per cent, of the cost goes as the 
wages of labor. There remains 35 to 30 per cent, for all other 
outgoings, including profit. The turnover on a steel business in 
this country about equals the capital invested. If this profit 
amounts to 10 per cent., of which 3 per cent, at least must go 
back into the business to maintain the works, he thinks himself 
lucky, and the 7 per cent, left must cover interest on his capital 
as well as the profits for his enterprise and risk. The remaining 
15 to 20 per cent, goes to cover rates and taxes, railway freights 
and so forth, part of which again goes to labor. 

Out of what fund, as Sir Hugh Bell asks, is he to pay a 10 per 
cent, increase in wages? If he paid 10 per cent, more, he would 
have no profit at all and could not continue the business. The 
increase in wages, then, can only come from within, by greatc 

386 



APPENDIX 

efficiency in management or greater production per man. There 
are, no doubt, many businesses which have some monopoly value, 
where capital secures a greater return; there are others where 
the return is less and the business is decaying. But except when 
abnormal conditions arise, as with shijjping now, or when a 
monopoly or a patent exists, the picture given by Sir Hugh Bell 
is more or less applicable to industry in general. 

No paper resolution, no legislation, and no economic the- 
ory can alter the facts of the industrial situation. But an 
adjustment and a gain can be made by a new release of 
productive energy on the part of the management and the 
men, by consultation between labor and capital, and by- 
hard intellectual effort put on each detail of both the in- 
dustrial process and the industrial relationship. 

Labor is going to demand higher wages. To obtain them, 
labor must produce more goods, and the employer must 
improve his methods, instal new machinery, and consult the 
worker. Some employers will meet the situation with su- 
perlatively good management — a management that will wel- 
come the worker to a share in control, and will increase pro- 
duction and wages without financial loss. Some employers 
will make decreased profits, some will go to the wall, and 
some will fight the new conditions. If wisdom prevails on 
both sides, a new constitution of industry will be achieved. 



AUDITING WAGES AND PROFITS 

The whole wage question will become increasingly a mat- 
ter for expert accountants. This will mean a joint audit of 
costs, presented by management and men, and determined 
by the state. In the South Wales coal-field the figures as 
presented by the federation executive, after the cost of 
standard labor and stores and other costs of production have 
been deducted, show: 

387 



APPENDIX 

Period Wages Profits 

From April, 1910, to June, 1915 67.00 (percent.) 9.67 

" July, 1915, to June, 1916 61.79 " " 16.35 

Quarter ended June 30, 1916 56.46 " " 24.05 

The owners reply that the rise in the cost of production 
has kept even with the rise in selling price. They instance 
the prices of pit wood^ rails, and colliery stores, in addition 
to a succession of wage increases. 

Obviously this is not a question for frenzied rhetoric, 
but for expert analysis. One wonders if, as we approach 
the minimum wage in legislation, we are approaching the 
maximum return permitted to capital. To make this clear: 
will the state lay down a minimum Avage of thirty-six shil- 
lings for the worker, and a prohibition for capital of any- 
thing over ten per cent. } 

THE TIE VOTE 

The present proposals for workers' control through work- 
shop councils lea^'e the final vote on a tie with the man- 
agement. The workers, sitting as council members with 
the managers of the industry, will become partners instead 
of wage hands in the business. They will be "junior part- 
ners" at first. The extent of their control will be deter- 
mined by their ability and their self-conscious power as a 
class. 

HOUSING 

In the city of Stanley, England, " overcrowding is found 
to exist in 50 per cent, of the houses. It can hardly be 
doubted that the existence of overcrowding on so serious 
a scale is one of the chief factors which gives rise to such 
a high infantile mortality as is found in Stanley, namely 
169 per one thousand births." So says the authoritative 
388 



APPENDIX 

investigation "Livelihood and Povert}^ — A Study of Work- 
ing Class Households in Northampton, Warrington, Stan- 
ley and Reading" (1915). 
And it goes on to report: 

One-half of the households below the poverty line at Warring- 
ton and Reading, nearly one-half at York, and one-third at North- 
ampton, were living in poverty because the wages of the head of 
the household were so low that he could not support a family of 
three children or less. A great part of the poverty revealed by 
our inquiries is not intermittent but permanent, not accidental or 
due to exceptional misfortune, but a regular feature of the in- 
dustries of the towns concerned. Of all the causes of primary 
poverty which have been brought to our notice, low wages are 
by far the most important. To raise the wages of the worst paid 
workers is the most pressing social task with which the country 
is confronted to-day. 

In Northampton nearly 13 per cent, and in Reading 15 per cent, 
earn less than 20 shillings. In four out of five of the towns, more 
than one quarter, and in two out of five towns, more than one-third 
of the adult male workers were earning less than 24 shillings per 
week. 

Sixty years ago, the population of England and Wales 
was evenly divided between town and country dwellers. 
Now four out of ever}' five persons are living in the towns, 
and only one out of five in the country. Turning to rural 
conditions, as described in the investigation "How the La- 
borer Lives," we find: 

Seventy per cent, of the agricultural workers in England and 
Wales are paid laborers, having no direct financial interest in the 
success or otherwise of the work in which they are engaged, and 
only 30 per cent, farmers, small holders, or members of their 
families. This is a serious fact, for probably in no other Eu- 
ropean country is there so high a proportion of agricultural work- 
ers who are "divorced from the soil." In 1907 the weekly earnings 
of ordinary agricultural laborers in England averaged 17 shillings 



APPENDIX 

6 pence. It may be taken as an established fact that a family 
of five persons whose total income does not exceed ^0 shillings b" 
pence, and whose rent is two shillings, is living below the "pov- 
erty line." If we now turn to the actual wages of ordinary ag- 
ricultural laborers we find that with five exceptions, the average 
earnings in every county of England and Wales are below it. 
The real wages of agricultural laborers have actually diminished 
since 1900. 

Let the reader try for a moment to realize what this means. 
It means that from the point of view of judicious expenditure, 
the be all and end all of life should be physical efficiency. It 
means that people have no right to keep in touch with the great 
world outside the village by so much as taking in a weekly news- 
paper. It means that a wise mother, when she is tempted to buy 
her children a pennyworth of cheap oranges, will devote the penny 
to flour instead. It means that the temptation to take the shortest 
railway journey should be strongly resisted. It seems that toys 
and dolls and picture books, even of the cheapest quality, should 
never be purchased; that birthdays should be practically indis- 
tinguishable from other days. It means that every natural long- 
ing for pleasure or variety should be ignored or set aside. It 
means, in short, a life without color, space, or atmosphere, that 
stifles and hems in the laborer's soul as in too many cases his 
cottage does his body. 



The motto of one of the villagers is given: "We don't 
live, we linger." And yet, with these appalling conditions 
of primary poverty in city and country, it is true that "there 
has been an enormous improvement in the conditions of the 
industrial population in Britain during the last sixty or 
seventy years. There is a residuum of the population liv- 
ing on the margin of subsistence, whose lot could not have 
been much worse in 1 830 than it is now. It is possible that 
the size of this residuum is as large, or even larger, now 
than seventy years ago, but it bears a smaller proportion 
to the total population." 

390 



APPENDIX 



LIGHT RAILWAYS 

Belgium has £2.8 miles of light railway to every 100 
square miles of territory. Great Britain has .37 of 1 mile 
to every 100 square miles. That is, Belgium has 38 and 
one-half times as many miles of light railwaj'^ in proportion 
to her total area as Great Britain. This means not only 
more agriculturists, but it means that more industrial 
workers can and do live on the land, instead of in the slums 
of cities. Twenty-three per cent, of the occupied persons 
in Belgium are engaged in agriculture, but 56 per cent, of 
the whole population live in rural and only 44 per cent, in 
urban communes. "Everywhere in traveling through Bel- 
gium one hears of tracts of land opened up to profitable 
agriculture or commerce by means of the light railways." 
The extraordinary development of agriculture is to no small 
extent due to these facilities for the transport of produce 
in bulk and in small quantities. A thorough study of this 
system of light railways has been made by Seebohm Rown- 
tree in "Land and Labor — Lessons from Belgium." He 
summarizes a detailed consideration as follows: 

In comparison with her size, Belgium has the most extensive 
system of main and light railways and canals in the world. Al- 
most all her main railways are national property, and she is 
financing her light railways so cleverly that they will become pub- 
lic property at the end of a certain number of years, without any 
appreciable cost to the public purse. She has frankly recognized 
that light railways cannot do more than just pay their way, and 
will never show so high a return upon capital as to induce capital- 
ists to choose them in preference to other industrial investments. 
If economically managed, however, they can be run practically 
without loss, and they are of inestimable value in opening up 
country districts and developing agriculture. Indeed, it may be 
said that small holdings cannot be made fully successful without 

391 



APPENDIX 

such means of cheap and rapid transport as light railways afford. 
Canals, which are almost all national property in Belgium, are 
looked upon as high roads, and the State is satisfied if the very low 
charges made for their use cover, or almost cover, the cost of 
upkeep. The very low rates charged for the transport of goods 
both on railways and canals are a great benefit to industry as 
well as agriculture, and the extraordinary cheapness of the work- 
men's tickets upon the railways has economic effects of a far- 
reaching character — among others it facilitates decentralization 
of population and industries, and thus largely destroys the 
monopoly of landowners in towns. 

CHURCH ATTENDANCE 

In the midweek of November^ 1916, this advertisement 
appeared in the "Guardian": 

The LIVING of Catherston Leweston, near Charmouth, Dorset, 
is VACANT. The adult inhabitants of the parish are 22, the 
full value of the living £75; value last year £67 17s. Healthy, 
southern locality, near the sea. No rectory-house. 

A few years ago, the "Daily News" made a census of 
London churches. At that time the number of City 
Churches connected with the Established Church was 45. 
The attendances at all these churches on Sunday morning 
was 4,634. At St. Alban's, there were 13 persons present, 
of whom six were children. St. Mildred's had 14. In the 
morning, St. Alphege had 37, of whom 21 were children. 
In the evening, 37 came, but one child was unable to come, 
and an additional woman attended, and saved the average. 
Of the total 45 churches, eight had attendances of over 
100 in the morning. 

In one Noncomformist Congregational Church, the City 
Temple, there were 3,463 persons in the congregation, as 
compared to 4,634 persons in all the 45 churches of the 
Established Church. It is doubtful if the community will 
permanently carry that burden of expense for a venerable 
state institution. 

392 



APPENDIX 

MONEY OR EDUCATION 

The labor exchanges are constantly thrown against hu- 
man problems. One of their executives told me of being 
forced to decide whether to send a lad fourteen years old, 
in poverty, into a fairly well-paid job, which will prove 
after a couple of years only a "blind alley," or to put him 
into a trade which will give him a low wage, but train him 
for a life-job. It is easy to decide on a "general principle," 
but what is the answer when one studies the living condi- 
tions of the boy and his family? 

WOMEN IN INDUSTRY 

Women in industry have opened many questions. Are 
they, for instance, willing to undergo a long industrial 
training from which they will be graduated skilled workers ? 
One investigator states that in dressmaking materials they 
are ignorant of texture and fabric, " though these would 
seem to form a subject matter peculiarly fitted to their 
tastes. It is men who occupy the higher positions in this de- 
partment because they have cared to fit themselves by a 
course of study." 

Miss Proud in her book on "Welfare Work" reports: 

There is a tendency for women to feed the machines which 
men control ; that is to say, women's work is apt to become mechan- 
ical and low-priced, therefore uninspiring and ineflficient. . . . 
Women are inferiors in the industrial world because they have 
not decided (except individually) that they desire to be other- 
wise, or at least that they desire to pay in training the price of 
eflBciency, 

If they remain untrained, they remain unskilled, and can 
not receive the wages of skilled labor. Are they to form a 
great new proletarian mass of unskilled labor, with low 
393 



APPENDIX 

wages, while men workers direct them and receive a higher 
wage? Will such a division, growing ever sharper, answer 
the woman's craving for equality, which is one of the main 
impulses of the woman's movement ? Will a system of wage 
slavery, with men eternalh'- in the position of boss, fore- 
man, and superintendent, seem a fuller life than the home? 

Factory inspectors and employers state that the girl up 
to the age of twenty-five often has her mind only half on 
her work and the other half on her prospects of marriage. 
The evening is to her the most valuable part of the day, 
because she then becomes a social being. In a large and 
exceptionally healthful factory the women left at about 
twenty-five years of age. 

"Their evenings," said the manager, "have ceased to be 
matters of first-rate importance to them, and they do not 
mind entering domestic service." 

Miss Proud summarizes this sort of report, of which 
there were many: 

The suggestion is that women, as a rule, do not give themselves 
unreservedly to their work until they no longer anticipate giving 
themselves in their offspring. 

Psychological facts like these leave us with few of the 
old-time catch phrases such as "Equal pay for equal work." 

WOMEN AND POPULATION 

Adelyne More in her excellent pamphlet "Fecundity ver- 
sus Civilization" has collected extracts from a wide read- 
ing of recent discussions on Birth Control. She quotes from 
Fran Stritt, president of the Woman Suffrage Union of 
Germany, who occupies a position in the German suffrage 
movement similar to that held by Mrs. Fawcett in Eng- 
land. Frau Stritt writes: 

394 



APPENDIX 

This question (the responsibility of women for their lives as 
mothers) involves for all those vfho have learned to think tilings to 
their conclusion the real innermost core of the woman question. 
Thus in a certain sense the population question is to be regarded 
as the VI' Oman question, 

and Frau Stritt quotes from Dr. Rutgers: 

Through physiological knowledge the woman has again come 
to be the mistress of her own body and of her own fate. 

I am seeking to record tendencies^ not to offer special 
pleas for theories in this profoundly important matter of 
population, the solution of which will determine economic 
basis, social structure, and foreign policy. It is probably 
the most significant single step the race has ever taken in 
the control of environment. And it will be with this as 
with other extensions of that control. It will alter human 
relationships. Children — "that is the indispensable condi- 
tion both for military and industrial success," says Nau- 
mann: food for powder and food for factories. The fact 
that such advocacy still exists must be faced by those who 
would blithely cut down the number of the western democ- 
racies. 

Adelyne More sees the two problems. 

(1) Birth-control must be practised in the slum. Until the 
lower class restricts, our civilization is being replenished by the 
feeble-minded and the diseased. 

(2) The militaristic nations must practise birth-control or tliey 
will over-run the democracies. 

She quotes from Alfred Naquet: 

If the individuals who compose the nation wish to progress, to 
develop, to live; if, in order to attain this truly human ideal, they 
depart from the instinctive habits of the non-human animal; if they 
limit their oifspring in order to raise themselves in dignity, in 
wealth, in intellectual power; to overcome the perils in which 

395 



APPENDIX 

organic nature abounds, and to investigate the secrets of nature 
— then their country will be vanquished, invaded, spoiled of its 
wealth, and their children ruined and reduced to partial slavery. 

Sir John Halliday Croom, Professor of Midwifery in the 
University of Edinburgh, writes: 

The falling birth-rate is due to many complex causes, but a great 
many of the voluntarily sterile marriages are due to the fear and 
dread which women have of child-bearing. This, so far as my 
personal experience is concerned, is a growing dread, and I feel 
sure is one of the many causes giving rise to the falling birth- 
rate. Now, if a knowledge of Twilight Sleep were to become 
generally known amongst women, it would do a great deal to 
abrogate the first curse, and so relieve their minds of an over- 
powering dread. 

Sidney Webb wrote, a few years ago: 

Twenty-five per cent, of our parents is producing 50 per cent, 
of the next generation. . . . The ultimate future of these islands 
may be to the Chinese! 

This year Dean Inge notes the tendency towards what 
I may call industrial celibacy, w^hich he summarizes : 

In all trades where the women work for wages the birth-rate 
has fallen sharply. 

This restriction would tend to separate women into 
classes, of which we have an instance in the Athenian City- 
State, where there was a class of sterile intellectual alien 
women, in sharp distinction to the mothers of the race. 
We read in "The Greek Commonwealth" : 

Women tended to become crystallized into two separate types 
— the household matron under the tutelage of a husband or some 
other male protector, and the independent professional woman, 
who had indeed her "guardian" as Athenian law demanded, but 
kept him for occasional use, as we keep our solicitors. 

396 



APPENDIX 

These professional women were wool-workers and mar- 
ket-women or retailers. 

But the chief and most conspicuous profession open to an alien- 
born woman in a Greek city was to be what was known as a 
"companion." It was "companions," not marriageable girls, whom 
the young Athenian encountered in mixed gatherings, in attendance, 
perhajis, on some of the most refined and distinguished men of the 
day; for it was by contributing to the success of these parties, 
from which the native-born woman was rigidly excluded, that 
they earned their livelihood. "M^e have companions for the sake 
of pleasure," says Demosthenes, making a clear distinction in 
which there is no hint of overlapping, "and wives to bear us law- 
ful oflFspring and be faithful guardians of our houses." 

Though Athens had no Shakespeare to help us to understand 
thera they must often have felt as lonely and as sad at heart as 
the poor Fool. If they had been allowed the support of their 
secluded sisters who could only watch them wistfully from their 
windows, as they mingled with the men in the streets and in the 
market-place, they might have set the intercourse of the sexes, 
for the first time in history, on an intelligent basis, and saved 
the memory of Athens from a reproach of which it is not possible 
to clear her. 

The suggestion of a woman's sex strike is dealt with by 
Aristophanes in his Lysistrata. "Athens witnessed the rise 
of a movement for the emancipation of woman." Euripides 
expressed the "war-cry" of suiFering woman, and their re- 
volt from the "hard hating voices." But their bitterness 
did not avail, because organizing social thought had not 
arrived at the solution. To-day the effort is renewed to 
give expression to the various and complex dispositions 
of millions of individual women. War and the strife 
of labor and capital are surface ripples compared with 
the immense instinctive forces let loose by this effort. 
Governments and trade-unions will be broken if they op- 
pose it. 

397 



APPENDIX 



CLOTHES 



At the meeting of shareholders of the Fore Street Ware- 
house Company a net profit for the year 1916 of $315,000 
was announced. In 1914 the profit was $140;,000. The 
chairman, in explaining the prosperity of this wholesale 
drapery company, said that "there were many women who 
for one reason or another had now more money to spend on 
surplus requirements than they had had at any previous 
time, and whose first and natural desire was to replenish 
their wardrobes." 

The fact that drapery houses generally experienced a 
profitable year in 1916 is shown by the reports of the 
firms. Messrs. J. F. & H. Roberts, a Manchester house, 
record a net profit of £42,220 or £24,000 more than three 
years previously. Messrs. Hunter, Barr & Co. of Glasgow 
announce an improvement of fifty per cent, on 1913, the 
net profit for last year being £32,488. In the case of 
Messrs. John Howell & Co. the figure for last year was 
£42,158 against £10,580 in 1913. This is the highest 
result in the forty-six years' history of this company, and 
is nine times better than four years ago. Messrs. Pawsons 
& Leafs record an advance from £7,639 to £35,853 in the 
three years. Messrs. Foster, Porter & Co. of Wood Street 
also announce profits nearly three-and-a-half times those 
for the last year of peace, though in this case additional 
capital has been called up during the interval. The profit 
for 1916 was £49,188. Messrs. Alliston & Co. have turned 
a loss of £6,406 in 1913 into a profit of £11,156 last year. 

Balancing this increased expenditure, we have many 
thousands of cases, of which Mrs. Pember Reeves has col- 
lected examples such as the following: 

398 



APPENDIX 

Mrs. P. whose husband is a railway man, used to get 27 shillings 
before the war, and now has 33 shillings. She has a new baby, 
which brings the number of her children up to five. Her rent for 
three rooms was 7 shillings; it is now 8 shillings for four rooms. 
She always paid a shilling a week each to a clothing and a boot 
club, and this she continues to do. Her "gramophone" ("the 
women are all buying a piano or gramophone") appears to be 
that she now buys twelves loaves a week instead of seven, and 
pays four shillings instead of 1 shilling 5i/^ pence for it. Her coal 
costs her lOy^ pence more, her meat 2 shillings more, her tea 5 
pence, her potatoes 6 pence, and the rest of her expenditure is 
about 1 shilling 10 pence higher than it was before the war. She 
is getting six shillings more, but the items just quoted show that on 
them alone she is spending over eight shillings more than she used 
to do. She, therefore, has ceased to buy fish, bacon, eggs, cocoa, 
jam, and cow's milk altogether, and buys less quantities of pot- 
herbs, margarine, and sugar. 

TRADE UNIONS AND VOTES FOR WOMEN 

If the recommendations of the Speaker's Franchise Con- 
ference are carried into effect^ the male electorate will 
number nearly 11 million out of a manhood of 121/2 mil- 
lion. But the Speaker's Conference has dodged the woman 
suffrage question, and, instead of a unanimous finding, they 
have passed on the onus of giving women the vote to Par- 
liament. They have given only a majority vote to the 
"principle, and present a "proposal" which will give the 
suffrage to six million women out of l-i million. In short, 
they have "side-stepped," and left "Lloyd George's muni- 
tion girls" who "saved the nation" to win the vote if they 
can. The Woman's Movement in Great Britain will con- 
tinue to be in part political, not because it does not value 
the human implications of woman's position in the modern 
world, but because it believes the franchise is necessary in 
order to achieve those higher values. The insistence on 
"Votes for Women" has v,'rongly seemed to some continen- 



APPENDIX 

tal critics as the superficial catch-phrase of women who had 
not plumbed the meaning of feminism. 

Industrially, working women face the same situation as 
politically. The fight for a decent standard of living is 
only in its beginning. There are only 74,000 factories and 
workshops out of 277,000 in the United Kingdom under 
regulations or Special Rules. At Barking, a firm, engaged 
in the manufacture of India rubber goods, was employing 
600 women. Soon after the outbreak of war, the firm 
announced that workers in the Warping shed would be em- 
ployed if they signed this agreement: "We, the under- 
signed, agree to work without a. Trade Union." The man- 
ager said: "I will liave no woman in the firm who belongs 
to a Trade Union." Eighty of the women belonging to the 
Warping Department refused to sign the paper. The ma- 
jority of them found work elsewhere. 

Certain trade unions have opened their membership to 
women — the Dockers' Union in the Transport Workers' 
Federation, some of the unions in the Federation of Fur- 
nishing Trades, the National Union of Railway men, and 
the Railway Clerks' Association. But the engineering 
trade — where the largest movement of women into men's 
work has taken place — has not made up its mind, and has 
improvised a Speaker's Conference compromise in which 
women are enrolled in the National Federation of Women 
Workers, by arrangement with the Amalgamated Society of 
Engineers. About 40,000 women have been so organized 
out of 500,000 women munition makers. The working 
woman's place is either the sweat shop or trade-union. 
As J. J. Mallon, who has long mediated in wage and status 
disputes, says: 

The line of separation between skilled and unskilled workmen is 
shown by the war to rest on little more than a convention, and 

400 



APPENDIX 

the craftsmen realize that if the laborer is not admitted to com- 
radeship all their privileges are insecure. 

And that line of separation is equally a convention be- 
tween men and women. 

"The Woman Worker," the organ of the woman's trade 
union movement, states: 

The women who are doing very well are those who have had 
the help, not merely of their own organizations, but of the great 
men's unions. The Govenunent protection of wages has been 
given, not in proportion to the needs of the workers, or to their 
usefulness, but solely in proportion to the strength of the de- 
mand. 

And it instances Newcastle, where there are 6,000 women 
trade-union members, and the award given in the case of 
Messrs. Armstrong Whitworth's is superior to others, the 
time rate being fixed at 5 pence an hour, with special rates 
for gagers, examiners, and danger zone workers. 

So, in the next five years, women must win over Govern- 
ment, the men's trade unions, and the employers. 

IRISH RAILWAYS 
Irish railways were investigated a few years ago by the 
British Government. Their commissioners found that the 
Irish railway problem is the restriction of agriculture, in- 
dustry and trade in Ireland, because internal and export 
transit rates are on a higher scale than the rates charged 
for conveyance of commodities which compete with Irish 
products in Irish and British markets. The decadence of 
Irish industries has been accelerated by the establishment 
of low through rates from British manufacturers to Irish 
villages, rates which have been much lower in scale than 
the local rates from Irish cities to Irish villages. The 
British-controlled Irish railways favored the British manu- 
401 



APPENDIX 

facturer at the expense of the local Irish manufacturer. 
The woolen trade and the textile and pottery industries 
have withered. 

But not only have through import rates into Ireland for 
many years been relatively lower than the Irish internal 
rates, but also through rates from abroad to British ports 
and interior centers have been on a lower scale than the 
export rates from Ireland. As the result of this, not only 
has Irish commercial industry been strangled, but Irish 
agriculture has been crippled. Even Ireland's one best 
agricultural industry, livestock, expanded only about 16 
per cent, in twenty years, and the cattle trade employs 
comparatively little labor. In eggs, Russia has been com- 
peting successfully against Ireland. On November 14, 
1916, T. W. Russell, vice-president of the Department of 
Agriculture, stated publicly that by far the largest pro- 
portion of the damage done in transit to exported eggs took 
place after the eggs had left Ireland. 

Winter dairying would be stimulated by proper railway 
facilities. If coals came to Newcastle from Cologne there 
would be prompt action. But Danish butter came into 
Limerick, one of the principal centers of the Irish butter 
trade. Irish butter is not to be had throughout the year in 
quantity enough for home consumption, though climate and 
agricultural conditions of Ireland are more favorable for 
winter dairying than those of Denmark. Better methods of 
production and a reduction of railway rates, encouraging 
farmers to go in for winter dairying, are both needed. 

The classification of Irish goods, each with its own rate, 
is confusing. The secretary of the Cooperative Movement 
stated to the Railway Commission that "the influence exer- 
cised over Irish railways by English companies is a bad 
influence, a growing influence, and likely to grow further." 
4.02 



APPENDIX 

The Managing Director of the City of Dublin Steam 
Packet Company asserted that the London and North 
Western Railway Company practically controls the Irish 
railways, and that a company like his own, when competing 
with that railway company across the Channel, is virtually 
powerless, as whatever rates it agrees to, his company has 
to agree to the same. 

Just as Ireland has been importing food when she could 
produce it, so she has been making large imports in coal 
when she has extensive coal fields. Here, as in agriculture, 
railway facilities are needed. The required additional cap- 
ital for opening certain of them up will be forthcoming when 
the requisite railway communication is provided. This is 
true of the Castlecomer and the Arigna coal fields. Four 
miles of railway will release the Arigna mines. 

Of the field at Coalisland, E. St. John Lyburn, economic 
geologist and mineral expert to the Department, said : 

The prospector would require $35,000 or $50,000 for trial holes, 
and the field can be developed for $1,500,000 or $3,000,000. There 
is no other country but this where the trial would not have been 
made before now. There are about 60 million tons of coal, and 
that can be multiplied by ten or one hundred, as the deposits 
are revealed by the scaling of the trial holes. 

In this one instance, it is capital rather than railway 
facilities that are required. But at Wolf Hill, and for most 
of Ireland, the primary need is railway facility. Capital 
will follow opportunity. The condition of low rates and 
special facilities in railway transport is a traffic large in 
volume, regular in transmission, and presented to the car- 
riers in a form convenient to handle. This means regu- 
larity of supply, a volume of consignments, good packing 
of produce, cooperation among producers. The low Con- 
tinental rates, which have helped to capture the British 
403 



APPENDIX 

markets, and injure Ireland^, are also due in many instances 
to the cheapening of transport by Government subsidy and 
to state ownership of lines. 

While I was in Ireland, the Irish railways were taken 
over by the British Government. No policy has yet been 
announced. A broad state policy in tillage, fertilizer, 
seeds, machinery and a unified and extended railway system 
will bring prosperity to Ireland. If that Government sub- 
sidy carries with it the power over Irish taxation, the Irish 
people will probably reject the policy. In that event, Ire- 
land herself will have to find the money for raising her 
major industry, agriculture, to a new level. In either case, 
the time has come for a momentous decision, on which rests 
the welfare of the next fifty j'^ears. 

IRISH AGRICULTURE 

A country, whose basic industry is agriculture, has to 
import its food. A country, made up of farmers and under- 
populated, has too few farms, and those farms too small 
and poor. Such is the heritage left to Ireland by "British 
statesmanship" like that of Sir Robert Peel. The economic 
basis of Ireland is agriculture, but in 1915 it was forced to 
import bacon and hams at a cost of $15,500,000, butter 
$2,300,000, oats $750,000, wheat $20,000,000, wheat flour 
$18,500,000. 

T. W. Russell, vice-president of the Department of Agri- 
culture, says: 

Without doubt we might have produced every shilling's worth 
of this and much more ourselves. The Government at the present 
time is bringing food from every quarter of the globe. It is 
doing this at immense cost and at no little risk. And all the 
while there are several millions of acres in Ireland which might 
be tilled with profit to the farmer and immense advantage to 
the State. 

404 



APPENDIX 

The Department of Agriculture states that there is every 
likelihood that next season the supply of superphosphate 
will not equal the demand. This will prevent the manuring 
of grass lands. Some thousands of tons of sulphate of cop- 
per was exported, not for military purposes. "It was taken 
from Irish agriculture," says the "Freeman's Journal," "at 
a time of its sorest need and sold to protect agriculture in 
other countries. Hence there was only a limited supply 
of spraying material in this country to stem the ravages of 
the blight." 

It was sold to France and Italy for spraying grapes. 

This action left Irish agriculturalists with practically no sul- 
phate for the spraying of potatoes. That is the cause of the 
failure of more than one-fourth of the Irish potato crop this 
year. 

Mr. Runciman, speaking of the United Kingdom, said: 

Plowing is behindhand not only because many horses have been 
put out of action, but because steam carriage is lying idle in con- 
sequence of mechanics having been so freely x'ecruited from some 
of the big agricultural implement makers. 

Irish agriculture has been crippled at the very crisis when 
food is necessary for Great Britain to win the war. Sup- 
plies of seed, fertilizer, imported food-stufFs, and agricul- 
tural and dairy machinery, are shortened when they ought 
to be greatly extended. 

An important study of Irish agriculture has recently been 
made by an expert whom I know, who signs himself "Agri- 
cola." I am not at liberty to publish his name. One of 
the high officials of the British Government in Ireland 
recommended these articles to me as giving a just picture 
of conditions. I summarize the conclusions in what fol- 
lows. 

Irish agriculture is backward because three-fifths of the 
405 



APPENDIX 

land is held by one-sixth of the landholders under terms 
restricting or prohibiting tillage. Four-fifths of all the 
crops are used on the farms for seed or for food to live 
stock, and only one-fifth is sold either as human food, as 
food for non-agricultural live stock, or as raw material for 
industry, such as flax and barley. From that one-fifth must 
also be deducted the one-seventh which farmers and their 
families use. So farming product is one-seventh crops and 
six-sevenths live stock and produce for live stock. There 
is room then for extension of the crop area of Ireland, 
which would both benefit the live stock production and in- 
crease corn food for the population. Care must be taken 
in increasing tillage not to let cows run dry for want of 
sufficient food. But care can be taken to safeguard live 
stock and yet to release the acreage of Ireland for tillage. 
Over sixty-four per cent, of the land of Ireland is in 
grass or crops. 

At every stage in his history the Irish agriculturalist has been 
struggling against laws and ordinances that sought to force grazing 
instead of tillage. These Orders and enactments are on record 
since the days of Cromwell and the Stuarts. 

But the tillage instinct of the Irish farmer has continued 
strong against alien legislation. 

In the middle of the last century, Peel attacked tillage in 
Ireland, and the wholesale evictions that cleared thousands of 
acres were the beginning of the grazing ranches that are the cause 
of contention in our own day. 

Four hundred and sixty-seven thousand three hundred 
and thirty-five acres of wheat were lost to the plow. 

The British Food Controller would do well to note that the 
loss of this food in this crisis in his country's history is due to 
what was then loudly acclaimed as "wise British statesmanship." 
The decrease in the area of all corn crops since Sir Robert Peel's 

406 



APPENDIX 

Plantation Scheme was started is nearly two million acres. There 
is a loss of 60 per cent, of corn, of 26 per cent, of green crops, 
and of 65 per cent, of flax. 

In 1916, the area of pasture and grazed mountain in- 
creased by 86,585 acres to total of 12,437,709 acres. The 
tillage increased only 42,236 acres to a total of 2,400,356 
acres. So the same bad tendency toward pasture over 
tillage is still under way. England in refusing to let Ire- 
land sow has now failed to reap the harvests that would 
have reduced submarines to toys. 

The absence of drainage and of irrigation is a further 
hindrance to Irish farming. The lowering of riverbeds, 
like the Barrow and the Shannon, is suggested. A century 
ago, a Royal Commission of the British Government recom- 
mended a drainage scheme for the 477,784 acres of turf 
bog in Ireland. Other commissions since then have rein- 
forced the demand, but the bogs still exist and even in 
recent years have risen on their imderwater and traveled 
over the adjacent country, in one instance for a distance 
of ten miles and a depth of 40 feet. A bog injures the 
land around by excessive moisture to an extent of perhaps 
50 per cent, of its own area. The bogs of Ireland cover 
4 and one-third per cent, of the surface of the land. Eight 
and one-half per cent, of Connacht is bog, and nineteen per 
cent, of King's County. There is bog in every Irish county. 
If these bogs were drained, much land would be freed, ir- 
rigation would be possible, and the immense supplies of 
peat could be used locally, converted into charcoal, for the 
production of power. 

TRUSTS 

Lord Milner writes: 

The future belongs to big-scale business or to such smaller 

40T 



APPENDIX 

businesses as can learn to work together and to pool their re- 
sources for certain objects — the full use of scientific research 
being only one of them — which individually they are not strong 
enough to attain. 

But large-scale production alone does not solve the labor 
difficulty. Our mining combines in the West and Perm- 
sylvania, our steel combine in the East, our interstate-rail- 
way combines have not softened the labor conflict. Two 
points of view are common in discussing big combines. 
One is to fight them as tyrannical and to try to break them 
up into competing units; the other is to swallow them 
whole. Neither satisfies. Is the large unit necessarily the 
most efficient? Is there no limit to its size? If in the 
given case, it is the most efficient, what shall be the method 
of democratic control? These are questions more fertile 
than ethical questions of the "good trusts," and theoretical 
questions as to whether Mr. Rockefeller is the middleman 
between individualism and socialism. A powerful group of 
men are urging the syndication of industry in England. 
They approve of "the large scale" for business. Doubtless, 
they will be successful. But when they have achieved it, 
they will be faced by the same problems that America now 
wrestles with. 

THE DECAY OF PARLIAMENT 

Sidney Low in "The Fortnightly Review" says that Par- 
liament has ceased to be a government-making organ, and 
that government in the future will continue to be carried on 
by great administrative commissions appointed by the cab- 
inet, directly responsible to it, and removed from the direct 
control of Parliament. 

The democratic machinery of the nineteenth century has 
broken doAvn. A new machinery is being slowly con- 
408 



APPENDIX 

structed. Under the old regime elected representatives of 
the people became the law-making body, the legislature; 
and a committee of the legislature was selected to be the 
cabinet, or executive. But in recent years there has grown 
up a body of a thousand departmental administrators, out- 
side Parliament, housed in government departments. This 
bureaucracy is a set of permanent expert officials who not 
only actually administer the law as created by Parliament, 
but initiate new legislation, which is carried into effect over 
the head of Parliament, because it is drafted into bills by 
these experts, handed to the cabinet by them, and made into 
acts by the power of the cabinet exercised on Parliament. 
So Parliament has tended to become a ratifying voice in- 
stead of a law-making body. 

'The cabinet, also, has changed. The various departmen- 
tal heads, who used to siu around as "cabinet ministers" and 
confer, have been forced back into their function as ad- 
ministrators of departments. A small body of men, just 
now five in number, form the directorate of goveriunent. 
The change from twenty-three executives to five gives cen- 
tralization of power and exactly located responsibility. 
The few can get results, and they can be held to account, 
where the many dodged both action and "strict accountabil- 
ity." The change is similar to that which has taken place 
in several hundred American city governments. Under the 
old ward system, we used to elect twenty or thirty men to 
"run" a city. Now we elect a commission government of 
five men, with full power and responsibility, who select 
their departmental administrative staffs. 

The five who rule Great Britain are called the War Coun- 
cil. When peace comes, it is probable that the old ex- 
tended cabinet will^ temporarily revive and resume its ac- 
tivities as a debating society, with diffused, unlocated re- 

409 



APPENDIX 

sponsibility and weakened executive power. But that 
machinery is outworn and is sure to be scrapped. It was 
constructed on the theory that the state is made up of citi- 
zens who can conduct their corporate life through repre- 
sentatives. That theory is an over-simplification of gov- 
ernment. 

To sum up present tendencies, the executive is rapidly 
defining itself and constructing its machinery. It is tend- 
ing toward tlie organized states directed by a few powerful 
executives, surrounded by administrative departments. It 
has outpaced the legislature, which is drifting impotent 
on the tide of state socialism, devised by expert officials 
and enacted by the handful of five men in control of gov- 
ernment. This new legislation was demanded by the com- 
munity not through its Parliamentary representatives, but 
by the new channels of trade-unions and government de- 
partments (military, naval, munitions, board of trade, home 
office, and local government board). 

But not only has the legislature been outpaced. Demo- 
cratic control over these executives and experts has failed 
to keep step with the rapid growth in their power. The 
community has not yet devised checks upon them. Repre- 
sentatives in Parliament, elected from geographical locali- 
ties, are now seen to be only one of the needed effective 
controls. The citizen is not only and essentially a resident 
in an area called Battersea who elects a Battersea man to 
safeguard Battersea interests. The citizen is also a pro- 
ducer and a consumer, and he wishes those functions safe- 
guarded in government. The citizen as consumer is gradu- 
ally establishing cooperation and local and national owner- 
ship. As a producer he strengthens whatever trade-union 
he belongs to (whether as doctor, business man, barrister, 
teacher, railwayman, or locomotive engineer) and is slowly, 

410 



APPENDIX 

but increasingly, establishing local, district, and national 
parliaments in his profession and industry. Through work- 
shop council, joint district board, and national conciliation 
committees he is asserting a control on government. Al- 
ready it is unquestioned that the demands of such a union 
as the miners are more eflfective in creating new legislation 
than the demands of members of Parliament. To coor- 
dinate these parallel and conflicting claims will be the com- 
ing task of government. The result will be a remodeled 
British Constitution. The present total eclipse of Parlia- 
ment is more complete than it will be after the war. Some 
of Parliament's former power will return to it. A resultant 
will be established between the various pressures of pro- 
ducers and consumers, between syndicalism and cooperation 
and state and municipal socialism. 

TARIFF REFORM 

The effort will soon be made in Great Britain to thrust 
into the forefront of politics minor fractional parts of re- 
construction as if they were major. A valuable pamphlet 
called "The Elements of Reconstruction" says: 

There is a danger — and nowadays it is the great danger — of be- 
coming just as blindly superstitious about a tariff (as about the 
kindred superstition of Free Trade). A tariff is perhaps a neces- 
sary part of any national economic scheme, but it is not in itself 
an economic scheme. A tariff varies in public value with the 
economic constitution of the State it protects. The country will 
not stand a merely protective tariff in foodstuffs, or in any com- 
modity. 

CHILD WELFARE 

Sir George Newman, chief medical officer of the board of 
education, states: 

The machinery for dealing with the welfare of infants and of 
children of school age is in existence, although all that ought to 
411 



APPENDIX 

be got from it is not yet being obtained. But the machinery for 
dealing with children between one year and five years of age 
has yet to be built. 

BACKWARD RACES 

The whole question of undeveloped countries and back- 
ward races has never been thought through by our people. 
We are lazy-minded on the causes of the war, and cherish 
a vague pacifism, as if the instinct of nationality and the 
lust for territory and new markets were non-existent. 

A. E. Zimmern writes: 

It may still be argued that the question is not Have the civilized 
powers annexed large empires? but Ought they to have done so? 
Was such an extension of governmental authority justifiable or 
inevitable? Englishmen in the nineteenth century, like Americans 
in the twentieth, were slow to admit that it was; just as the 
exponents of laissez-faire were slow to admit the necessity for 
State interference with private industry at home. But in both 
cases they have been driven to accept it by the inexorable logic of 
facts. What other solution of the problem, indeed, is possible? 

He then quotes another authority on the impossibility of 
standing aside and letting adventurers and exploiters en- 
ter, and on the need of backward peoples having contact 
with the outside world, and receiving protection from op- 
pression and corruption. This is a "duty" of the great 
powers — "a still better name would be the great responsi- 
bilities." 

The late Lord Cromer, in defending his rule in Egypt, 
once said: 

What, gentlemen, has there been no moral advancement? Is 
the country any longer governed, as was formerly the case, ex- 
clusively by the use of the whip? Is not forced labor a thing of 
the past? Has not the accursed institution of slavery practically 
ceased to exist? Is it not a fact that every individual in the 
country, from the highest to the lowest, is now equal in the eyes 
of the law; that thrift has been encouraged, and that tlie most 
412 



APPENDIX 

humble member of society can reap the fruits of his own labor 
and industry; that justice is no longer bought and sold; that 
every one is free — ^perhaps some would think too free — to express 
his opinions; that King Backsheesh has been dethroned from high 
places and now only lingers in the purlieus and byways of the 
administration; that the fertilizing water of the Nile is distributed 
impartially to prince and peasant alike; that the sick man can be 
tended in a well-equipped hospital; that the criminal and the 
lunatic are no longer treated as wild beasts; that even the lot of 
the brute creation has not escaped the eyes of the reformer; that 
the solidarity of interests between the governors and the governed 
has been recognized in theory and in practice; that every act of 
the Administration, even if at times mistaken — for no one is in- 
fallible — bears the mark of honesty of purpose and an earnest de- 
sire to secure the well-being of the population; and further, that 
the funds, very much reduced in amount, which are now taken 
from the pockets of the taxpayers, instead of being, for the most 
part, spent on useless palaces and other objects, in which they 
were in no degree interested, are devoted to purposes which are 
of real benefit to the country? If all these, and many other, points 
to which I could allude, do not constitute some moral advance- 
ment, then, of a truth, I do not know what the word morality im- 
plies. 

Let us criticize as much as we like the arrogance of 
tone in this and in the English belief in general that 
they are born to govern. But what do we offer in place 
of their imperfect administration? Are we willing to take 
on our share of the job of internationalizing these plague- 
spots, or are we going to turn them over to the people who 
live there? Which people? To the Mahdi and Khalifa 
who rise on a wave of religious hysteria and cause the death 
of over five million Egyptians in the space of fourteen 
years? To the particular tribe with the sharpest sword? 
To the most corrupt, and therefore most powerful, native 
prince who will use machme-guns on the "aliens" in the next 
province because they honor the prophet instead of the all- 
highest Lord Buddha? Is laissez-faire satisfactory? Ac- 
413 



APPENDIX 

tually there are only three "futures" for the undeveloped 
countries: anarchy, with the slavery and murder of the 
gentler tribes, and the unbridled exploitation of most of 
the natives; colonial rule; internationalization. 

HORATIO BOTTOMLEY 

The value of Horatio Bottomley as a leader in time of 
crisis can be appraised by these extracts from "John Bull." 
This is his contribution to child welfare : 

EDUCATION 

Will the new Education Minister just try to shake off his Uni- 
versity prejudices, and bring in a short Act releasing from school 
attendance all children capable of assisting on farms or doing 
other useful work— for the duration of the war? Never mind when 
William the Conqueror came to the throne. 

This is his knightly militant note: 

To win through to victory we must make every German bite the 
dust. The women who danced in the streets when the Lusitania 
murders shocked civilization are fighting us just as much as the 
men who reeled with drink when the joy bells rang over little 
children done to death by the bombs of the Zeppelin. 

One of his contributors has a word for backward races: 

Why drain Great Britain dry of its manhood, until the colored 
sons of Empire have been called into the fighting lines to help 
to bear the burden of war? We want more men to bring the 
Hun to his knees — why not three, six, or ten million colored 
soldiers to help to ram the sword of Victory home? I know 
many of the colored races, and I believe they would fight willingly 
and splendidly. Some opponents allege otherwise; if the latter 
are right, why ask the British taxpayers in time of peace to shell 
out to keep and protect a population that is no good to us in 
time of adversity? 

Finally we have Bottomley, the man of faith and vision, 
facing the unseen, a gentleman unafraid: 
414 



APPENDIX 

I, the man of the world, the man of Business, the man of 
affairs, the disciple of Foote and Bradlaugh, the nephew of 
George Jacob Holyoake— I have come to be convinced that there 
is no such thing as Death. 



LORD NORTHCLIFFE 

If labor becomes the crowned king, Lord NorthclifFe will 
be found the first by the throne. The most popular news- 
paper in Great Britain is his "Daily Mail." It is getting 
ready to make the flop. On January 25, 1917, it stated 
editorially : 

' LABOR AND THE NORTHCLIFFE PRESS 

WHY WE ARE PLEASED 

Far from believing that Labor has supplied too many Cabinet 
Ministers, we look forward quite confidently and cheerfully to the 
day when it will have many more, believing that after the success 
of our present Labor Ministers other Labor Ministers will be 
just as good. The responsibility of carrying on this Empire is 
great enough and inspiring enough to bring out the best qualities 
of any man of energy and insight who puts his back into the 
work. And if we are told with bated breath that a Labor Cabinet 
is a possibility of the future, then we reply without hesitation 
that we are quite ready for it. We are satisfied that whenever 
it does come, as, no doubt, it will in due course, it will be as 
good as any other Government we have ever had and it may be 
assured that in working for the welfare of our country and the 
Empire it will have the support of the Northcliffe Press. 

THE WHITE KNIGHT 

Here is a touch out of the eleventh century. A recent 
issue of "The Observer" stated that "if we are not mis- 
taken," the line of the White Knight was now extinct. 
Philip John Fitz-Gibbon thereupon wrote to them in No- 
vember of 1916: 

415 



APPENDIX 

Observer: 

November 12, 1916. 

I beg to observe that this is not the case. Though I have never 
assumed the title, 1 am the liolder of it. . . . At the time of my 
father's death in February, 1881, my uncle published an obituary 
notice in "The Times" and other papers stating that my father, 
Maurice Fitz-Gibbon, was tiie Wliitc Knight and that I was his 
successor in the title. 

In Vol. XVII, No. 93, of the Journal of the Cork Historical and 
Archaeological Society for January -March, 191^, Colonel J. Grove 
White, J. P., D.L., of Kilbyrne, Co. Cork, published the White 
Knight's pedigree (from Domiuus Otho in A.D. 1057 to date), 
which was taken from the authorities he has therein quoted, and 
stated clearly that I hold the title of White Knight, being ^tth 
in descent from the said Dominus Otho and 17th in descent from 
the first White Knight, Maurice, who was the eldest son of Gilbert, 
or Gibbon, whose second and third brothers, John and Maurice, 
were the respective ancestors of the Knights of Glinn (Black 
Knight) and Kerry (Red Knight). These Knighthoods date from 
the battle of Ilallidon Hill in 1333. 

The pedigree is taken largely from the Cotter MS., now in the 
British Museum. Burke's "Landed Gentry," too, states that I am 
the White Knight. 

LOCAL PATRIOTISM 

The Englisli love of locality is often overlooked by for- 
eign observers, because the Englishman seldom puts it into 
words. Thus Monsieur Davry says that the word patrie 
does not exist in English: for a Frenchman patrie means 
his sacred soil: home and inheritance. But "the place and 
all around it" are equally dear to the Englishman. Re- 
cently Lieutenant Lord Newborough died from trench-chill. 
In his will he wrote: 

I wish to be buried, if I die in England, in the simplest manner 
compatible with decency, on the summit of tlie Bluff in Festiniog, 
which lies on the western side of the road from Bryn Llewellyn 

416 



APPENDIX 

and which Bluff is known to my sisters and intimate friends as 
Newborough Hill, as from that spot there is my favorite view 
down the Vale of Festiniog; and I wi-^h my tombstone to be a 
simple slab of stone from my estate, protected from desecration 
by tourists, but otherwise leaving my burial-place free for sheep and 
cattle to roam all around the actual grave. 

THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH 

Archdall Reid has written in the "Eugenics Review" of 
the British Commonwealth. He says: 

This conflict (the war), however huge, is no more than an 
episode in an immensely vaster struggle, of which the prize is not 
precarious political supremacy in Europe for a few generations, but 
world predominance irre%-ocably established by nature. True de- 
cision was reached nearly a century ago. The great immigrations 
and permanent conquests are drawing to a final close. Germany 
joins a contest already decided. The battle is over, and with us 
rests the ultimate victory. The Anglo-Saxons have more space for 
expansion than any other people. ''AH Xorth America" is "in the 
grasp of the Anglo-Saxon and his race" has "almost limitless space 
for expansion." Subsequently he colonized Australasia. His place 
in the sun, his ultimate world-supremacy was now established. . . . 
With the exception of temperate South America and parts of the 
western seaboard of that continent, our race has colonized almost 
all the regions of the new world in which it is possible for a 
European race to flourish. In the coming future no other people 
will be so numerous, so widespread, or in command of resources so 
tremendous. 

Canada and Australasia may follow the example of the United 
States, and separate politically from the parent stock. BUT THE 
RACE ITSELF IS SECURE. It is impossible, within the bounds 
of probability, to imagine a conjunction of circumstances capable 
of uprooting it from its new habitations. The sword and disease 
are the only agents of racial elimination known to us, and now the 
latter, like the former, is losing its power. 

Dean Inge, who is one of the two or three best thinkers 
in the Established Church, has visioned the same future, 
417 



APPENDIX 

and he sees the possibility of a white race of 200,000,000 
in the British Commonwealth. 

WHAT TO READ 

A bibliography of the present reconstruction in Great 
Britain would number thousands of books and pamphlets. 
I wish to suggest a few of the more important of these 
for my reader who cares to make a study. 

Graham Wallas's "Human Nature in Politics" and "The 
Great Society" are the products of a lifetime of construct- 
ive thinking by one of the fertile intellects of the modern 
world. No one who wishes to understand the deeper 
psychological elements in the problems of modern England 
can do without the help of Wallas. He is one of the few 
writers on human nature in national and international poli- 
tics and industrial organization whose conclusions have been 
left unassailed by the war. 

Bertrand Russell's "Principles of Social Reconstruc- 
tion" (published in America as "Why Men Fight") is a 
stimulating instance of the new psychology applied to so- 
ciety. It contains passages of great beauty. Mr. Russell 
is not a fundamental thinker in social matters in the sense 
that Graham Wallas is. His book is a poem. 

A. E. Zimmern's essays in the "Round Table" and in the 
volume "Progress and History" are a careful study of the 
industrial situation by a man who understands the present 
tendency toward workers' control. 

"The Reorganization of Industry," a pamphlet issued by 
Ruskin College, contains a skilful analysis of what the post- 
office would be under democratic control. 

W. Mellor, the secretary of the National Guilds League, 
has kindly drawn up for me a list of references on work- 
ers* control. The list includes "Labor in War Time" by 

418 



APPENDIX 

G. D. H. Cole; the publications of the National Guilds 
League on "National Guilds/' "The Guild Idea/' "Towards 
a Miners' Guild"; "National Guilds/' edited by A. R. 
Orage; "The World of Labor" by Cole; "The Coal Trade" 
by H. S. Jevons; "Experiments in Industrial Organization" 
by Cadbury; "Trade as a Science" by McBean; "Coopera- 
tive Production and Profit Sharing/' an investigation by 
the committee of the Fabian Research Department. 

The investigation by the section of economic science and 
statistics of the British Association for the Advancement of 
Science has been published under the title of "Labor, 
Finance and the War." 

The pamphlet "Great Britain After the War" by Sidney 
Webb and Arnold Freeman is a short and valuable sum- 
mary. 

The Garton Foundation has issued a book on the "In- 
dustrial Situation after the War" which analyzes the revo- 
lutionary unrest and suggests remedies. Mr. Balfour is 
one of the trustees of this foundation. 

The investigations of Seebohm Rowntree are already 
classics for social workers. His studies of York, of agri- 
cultural labor, of land, of Belgium, are wadely known. It 
will be found that his recommendations will be influential 
in the reconstruction. 

"The Times" has had four series of articles of high im- 
portance. One series has been republished in a pamphlet 
called "The Elements of Reconstruction," with an intro- 
duction by Viscount Milner. A second series was on the 
resources of the empire, written by Wilson Fox, and led to 
the formation of the Empire Resources Development Com- 
mittee. A third was on the South Wales miners, and was 
instrumental in leading the Government to take over the 
mines. A fourth was on the industrial situation after the 

419 



APPENDIX 

war, and is a powerful statement for workers' control. It 
is written by Sidney Webb, and is now republished in 
pamphlet form. 

Miss Proud's book on "Women and Welfare Work," with 
an introduction by Lloyd-George, is a careful compilation 
of the improvements in the status of the British worker 
instituted by employers, the trade-unions, and the state. 
There is little interpretation in the book, but a valuable 
mass of facts. 

There is unfortunately nothing comprehensive on the 
woman's movement in its present development. The re- 
ports of Miss Anderson to the home office and Mrs. Bernard 
Drake's "Women in Engineering" are valuable for the 
area they cover. Files of the "Woman Worker," the organ 
of the Women's Trade Union Movement, cover many spe- 
cific instances. But the book of the movement remains to 
be written. What is needed in England to give coherence 
and self-consciousness to the woman's movement is as good 
a book as Katharine Anthony's "Feminism in Germany 
and Scandinavia." 

An excellent English statement of the Irish situation is 
given in the "Round Table" for September, 1916. George 
Russell ("A. E.") handles economics with his own admir- 
able rhythm in his volume, "The National Being: Some 
Thoughts on an Irish Polity." He is one of the three lead- 
ers in the Irish Cooperative Movement. No book exists to 
give us the full history of the cooperative movement in 
Ireland. It should be written. 

For an understanding of the young men of Ireland to- 
day the files for recent months of such weeklies as the "New 
Ireland" and "Irish Opinion" are necessary. Nowhere else 
is there so bold and clear an expression of the idealism 
which is penetrating the younger elements of the nation. 
420 



APPENDIX 

Such, then, are a few of the publications of comment 
on the vast changes now under way in the British nation. 
The opportunity is ripe for a book on the British common- 
wealth corresponding to Bryce's "American Common- 
wealth," 



421 



INDEX 



A. E.: 180; solution of Anglo- 
Irish problem by, 198-205; 
quoted on tenant farmers in 
Ireland, 313, 214, 264.. See 
George Russell. 

"A Nation Once Again": pa- 
triotic Irish song, quoted, 
19.2. 

"A Study of Working Class 
Households in Northampton, 
Stanley and Reading" : 
quoted on housing of work- 
ingmen, 384, 385. 

Actresses' Franchise League, 
103. 

Adams, Mrs. Bridges, 355, 356. 

AflForestation, 23. 

Agricultural communities: past 
success of, 60 et seq. 

Allen, Miss, 159. 

"Amalgamated Society of Engi- 
neers Journal," 285, 286. 

America: English emigration 
to, 31 ; wages of women in, 
96 ; birth-control movement 
in, 116; attitude of, toward 
birth restriction, 124 et seq.: 
national thought in, 317-326. 
See United States. 

Anglo-Indian: type of, 329, 330. 

Anitchkin, Dimitri, 285. 

Antin, Mary, 325. 

Aristophanes: quoted on eman- 
cipation of woman, 393. 

Arnold, Matthew, 211. 

Art: attitude of modern democ- 
racy toward, 61 et seq. 



Artists' League, 103. 
Asquith, Mr., 36. 
"Atheneum," 266, 
Atkinson, Miss, 101, 
Australia, 4, 9. 



Bairnsfather, Captain Bruce: on 
the "Tommy" attitude toward 
trench fighting, 280, 281. 

Bakunin, 283. 

Balfour, Mr.: type of mind of, 
8; quoted on democracy, 367, 
381. 

Beatty, 3. 

Belgium: in relation to social 
problems, 69 et seq.; relief 
work for, 237, 238, 341. 

Bell, Sir Hugh: analysis by, of 
wage problem, quotation, 48, 
49, foot-note; on cost of pro- 
duction of steel, 382. 

Belloc, Hilaire, 273. 

Bibliography of reconstruction 
movement in Great Britain, 
41S-416. 

Bigland, Alfred: quoted on em- 
pire resources, 363, 364. 

Birth-control: problem of, 113 
et seq.; movement in Amer- 
ica, 116; English opinion on, 
390-393. 

Bishops: attitude of, toward 
workers, 30. 

Black, Clementine, 101. 

Blatchford, Robert, 248. 

Bloomfield, 92. 



423 



INDEX 



Bonar Law: "Tory" type of 

mind of, 8. 
Bosanquet, Mrs., 101. 
Bottomley, Horatio, editor 

"John Bull": 348, 267-^69, 

295; quoted on education, 410; 

attitude toward death, 410. 
Bridges, Robert, 273. 
Brisbane, Arthur, 268. 
British Association: report of, 

cited on modern automatic 

machinery, 22, 59. 
British Commonwealth: plan 

and purpose of new, 4 et seq.; 

influence of war on, 6 et seq., 

96, 252, 253; relation of south 

of England to, 292, 293; Lord 

Milner quoted on, 353; Arch- 

dall Reid on, 412, 413. See 

England, Ireland. 
British Empire: unification of 

into one state, 7 et seq. 
"British Weekly," 272. 
Bryce, Viscount: quoted on 

English war spirit, 229. 
Burns, Robert, 93. 
Butler, Geoffrey: quoted on 

class system, 27, 350. 
Button, 62. 

Cabinet: cause of changes in 

British, 7 et seq.; predictions 

as to shifts in, 9. 
Cambridge: influence of, on 

class system, 28. 
"Cambridge Magazine," 24S. 
Canada, 4. 
Canning, 321. 
Carels Freres, 380. 
Carpenter, Edward, 63; quoted 

on English people, 183, 184, 

314. 
Carson, Sir Edward: 8; quoted 

on Ulster's attitude, 202, 



Cathery, E.: quoted on right of 
asylum, 285. 

Catholic Women's League, 103. 

"Chamber's," 274. 

Chamberlain, Joseph, 378. 

Chesterton, Cecil, 260, 261. 

Chesterton, Gilbert K.: remark 
of, on writing books, 63; 
quoted on the democratic 
movement, 229, 258; effect of, 
on public opinion, 260-262 ; on 
the "Tommy" attitude toward 
war, 280. 

Child labor, 144, 166 et seq. 

Child welfare: Sir George New- 
man quoted on, 407. 

Childers, Erskine: cited on the 
new social order in Ireland, 
177. 

Children: withdrawal of, from 
industry, 144. 

"Christian Commonwealth," 

British periodical, 272. 

Church: "brotherhood of trench- 
es" tried in, 366, 367. 

Class system, 26 et seq. 

Clergy: influence of Church of 
England on socialism, 29 et 
seq. 

Clifford, Dr., 344, 

Clothes: women's increased ex- 
penditure on, since entering 
industrial field, 393-395. 

Cohan, George, 267. 

Collet, Clara, 101. 

Colonies: attitude of, toward 
present status, 4. 

Combines. See Trusts. 

Common people: awakening of, 
13. See also Workmen. 

"Common Sense," 274. 

Commonwealth: genesis of the 
British, 4 et seq.; effect of 
war on, 6 et seq. See British 
Commonwealth. 



424 



i 



INDEX 



Companion help: wage and 
work-schedule of, in boarding 
house, 146. 

Connolly, 188. 

Constitutional reconstruction : 
effect of war on, 6 et seq. 

"Contemporary Review," 273. 

Cooperation: study of, in Eng- 
land, 368-380. 

Cooperative communities: influ- 
ence of, 82 et seq. 

Cooperative socialism: tendency 
of England toward, 15 et seq. 

Cooperative Society, 379. 

Cooperative societies: in Ire- 
land, 213 et seq. 

"Comhill Magazine," 274. 

"Cotton Factory Times," 285. 

Croatia, 96. 

Cromer, Lord: 253, 329; quoted 
on moral advancement of 
Egypt under British rule, 
408, 409. 

Croom, Sir John Halliday: 
quoted on birth-control, 391, 
392. 

Cuba, 322. 

Curtis, Lionel, 253, 269, 273. 

Curzon, Lord: type of political 
mind of, 8, 14, 262, 329. 



"Daily Mail" (London): 270, 
295, 311; quoted on labor, 411. 

"Daily News" (London): 271; 
census by, of church attend- 
ance, 388. 

"Dallas News," 271. 

Devenport, Lord, 311. 

Davles, Mr., war secretary, 339. 

Davis, Thomas: author of song 
"A Nation Once Again," 
quoted, 192 

Davray, Monsieur, 412. 

Dawson, Miss Darner: 159; quo- 



tation from speech by, on po- 
licewomen, 161-163. 

Debt: post-bellum problem of 
national, 248, 249. 

Democracy: England's influence 
on, 3 et seq.; effect of, on la- 
bor, 5; influence of present 
war on, 6; meaning of, 9; as 
a producer of leaders, 10 et 
seq.; purposes of, 12; growth 
of industrial, 58 et seq.; Eng- 
lish workman mainspring of, 
75, 76; three great sons of, 
80; demands of England on 
new, 82 et seq.; war run by, 
238, 239, 2^2:, attitude of, to- 
ward leaders, 254 et seq.; 
compulsory, 367, 368. 

Democratic control : explana- 
tion of, 53 et seq.; Dr. 
Graham Wallas quoted on, 
56. 

Denmark: relation of, to social 
problems, 69 et seq. 

Desborough, Selborne, 363. 

Despard, Mrs., 101. 

Detroit: a model industrial city, 
75. 

Dickens, Charles, 261. 

Dickinson, Lowes, 277, 314. 

Disraeli, Benjamin: quoted on 
tariff, 249, 250, 329. 

Dixmude, 70. 

Domestic policy: attitude of 
colonies toward England's, 4. 

Domestic service: war's effect 
on, 137. 

Donnington Hall, 278. 

Dostoyevsky: quoted on free- 
dom, 78. 

Dreyfus trial, 176. 

Drummond, Mrs. (The Gen- 
eral): Lloyd-George and, 20, 
158; comparison of, with 
Chesterton, 258, 259. 



4^5 



INDEX 



Dublin: congested population 

of, 207. 
Du Cros: women in the, factory, 

105. 
Dunraven, Lord, 363. 
Dunsany, 180. 

"Edinburgh Review," 274. 

Education: systems of, in Eng- 
land, 305 et seq. 

"Elements of Reconstruction," 
pamphlet: quoted, 407. 

Ellis, Havelock: quotation from 
"Essays in War Time," by, 
116, 119, 124, 314; quoted on 
English arrogance, 349. 

Empire resources, 231, 232. 

England: influence of, on de- 
mocracy, 3 et seq.; extension 
of power of, 4 et seq.; tend- 
ency of, toward cooperative 
socialism, 15 ; solution of labor 
problem in, 18 et seq.; privi- 
leged classes in, 26 et seq.; 
penalty to, if industrial de- 
mocracy fail, 35 et seq., 58, 
59; influence of, upon Russia, 
64; eflfect upon, of cheap 
transportation for workmen, 
70, 71 ; the supreme need of 
England, 71-73; demands of 
new democracy on England, 
82 ; Zimmern's views on indus- 
trial Germanization of, 89- 
94; champion of freedom and 
justice, 183; spirit of, at war, 
228 et seq.; why, will win 
present war, 231 et seq.; tem- 
perament of people of, 231, 
232; attitude of, toward tariflf 
on McKinley basis, 949; heart 
of social problem of, 250; de- 
mand of, for representation, 
254 et seq.; emotional change 
in, 257 et seq.; question of lib- 



erty in, 274 et seq.; attitude 
of, toward free speech, 274- 
281 ; "right of asylum" grant- 
ed by, 281-291; patriarchal, 
compared with modern, 292, 
293; passing of Little, 293- 
296; public opinion in, on 
peace, 299-301; systems of 
education in, 305 et seq.; co- 
existent civilizations in, 309- 
312; study of cooperation in, 
368-380. 

English: "a sentimental nation," 
240. 

English Cooperative Wholesale 
Society, 372. 

"English Prose Rhymes," an- 
thology, by Professor George 
Saintsbury, 314. 

Englishmen : individuality of, 
16: faults of, 40, 41: national- 
ity of, 329-336. 

Esher, Viscount, 381. 

"Essays in War Time": quota- 
tion from, by Havelock Ellis, 
116, 119, 124, 314. 

"Eugenics Review," 412. 

Euripides: quoted on woman's 
emancipation, 393. 

Europe: impossibility of united 
commonwealths of, 6; demo- 
cratic forces in, 80; effect on, 
woman's fight for political 
recognition, 95 et seq. 

"Evening Gazette," Cedar Rap- 
ids, Iowa: opinion of, of Cap- 
tain Hans Rose, 317. 

"Everyman," 272. 

Exports : Irish, to Great Britain 
in 1916, 217. 



Fabian Research Committee, 

373. 
Fabian Society, 313. 



426 



INDEX 



Factories: joint boards in, 30; 
effect of war on, 24:3-245. 

Fall River, 250. 

Fawcett, Mrs., 101, 390. 

"Fecundity versus Civilization," 
by Adelyne More: quotations 
from, 390-393. 

Female. See Woman. 

Feminists of the War Office and 
Admiralty, 118 et seq. 

Fisher, H. A. L., minister of 
education, 303, 304. 

Fitz-Gibbon, Philip John: let- 
ter from, 411. 

Ford, Henry, 207, 337. 

Foreign policy: attitude of col- 
onies toward England's, i et 
seq. 

"Fortnightly Review," 273. 

"Forward," 274. 

France: the privileged classes 
in, 26, 27, 96, 176; nationality 
in, 326. 

Franklin, Benjamin, 323. 

Free Speech: attitude of Eng- 
land toward, 274^-281. 

Free trade: Disraeli quoted on, 
249, 250. 

"Freeman's Journal": quotation 
from, on agriculture, 400. 

French communards, 283. 

French railway strike, 41. 

French reactionaries, 15. 

French Revolution, 41, 96. 

Fumes, 70. 

Gaelic: effect of study of, 182. 
Galsworthy, 272. 
Gardiner, A. G., 271. 
Garton, Sir Richard, 381. 
Garton Foundation: result of 
investigation of, quoted, 381. 
Garvin, J. L., 272. 
"General, The" (Mrs. Drum- 



m 



mond): 158; comparison with 
Chesterton, 258, 259. 

Germany: attitude of, toward 
woman, 100, 243; ignorance 
of, as to England's resources, 
278, 279. 

Ghent, 70, 86. 

Gillingham: domestics' war-sav- 
ings association of, 237. 

Gilmour, Lennox: campaign 
story told by, 234-236. 

Giovanitti, 189. 

Girl: letter of, revealing true 
war spirit of England, 230, 
231. 

Gould, Baring, 311. 

Great Britain: changes in gov- 
ernment leadership of, 3 et 
seq.; effect of war on rela- 
tions between, and colonies, 7 
et seq., 100, 252; northern and 
western, in fight for democ- 
racy, 291 et seq.; public opin- 
ion in, 291-302; study of co- 
operation in, 363-380; tariff 
reform in, 407. See also Eng- 
land. 

"Great Society, The," by Gra- 
ham Wallas : passage from, on 
rights of small nations, 211. 

"Greek Commonwealth, The" : 
quoted on professional 
women, 292, 293. 

Gregory, Lady, 180. 

Grey, Viscount, 270, 363. 

Grimsby: relation of, to war- 
savings, 237. 

Gwynne, 14, 248. 

Gymnastic Teachers' Suffrage 
Society, 103. 

Hague Conference: stimulus of, 
to British commonwealth, 
253. 

Haig, Sir Douglas, 3. 



INDEX 



Harcourt, Lewis: quoted on 
public ownership, 377. 

'Harrison, Austin, 248. 

Hay, John, 323. 

Henderson, Arthur, 311. 

Henry, O., 279. 

Henson, Dean, 367. 

"Herald" (London), 272. 

"Hibbert Journal," 274. 

Hodge, Mr., Minister of Labor; 
quoted on war's effect on new 
plants, 242 ; on free trade, 230. 

Holy Alliance, 321. 

Home Office, 62. 

Home Rule: new Irish attitude 
toward, 181, 182, 193-227, fas- 
sim. 

Hornsey, 160. 

Hours: influence of long, on so- 
cial movement, 25. 

Housing, 23, 69, 70, 384-386. 

"How the Laborer Lives": quo- 
tation from, on rural condi- 
tions, 385, 386. 

Howells, William Dean, 272. 

Hughes, Mr., premier of Aus- 
tralia, 254. 

Huguenots, 283. 

Hysteria: growth of, among 
English middle class, 258 et 
seq. 

Independent Labor party, 90. 

India, 4, 5. 

Industrialism, 67 et seq. See 
also Workmen. 

Inge, Dean: quoted on "indus- 
trial celibacy," 392 ; on future 
of British Commonwealth, 
413. 

International relations: prob- 
lem of, 11. 

Ireland: pioneer work of, in 
peasant proprietorship, 22 ; 
nationalism in, 173 et seq.; 



force of tradition in, 175, 176; 
industrial activities of, 179; 
attitude of the man in the 
street toward, 189, 190; total 
cultivated area and propor- 
tionate productiveness of, 
219, 220; micultivated land in, 
219-225; how, must be ruled, 
219, 220; financial gain of, 
since the 50's, 222 et seq., 252. 

Irish agriculture, 400-403. 

Irish Agricultural Organization 
Society, 179. 

Irish- Americans, 208. 

Irish newspapers: independence 
of, 263, 264. 

Irish people: changed attitude 
of, toward Redmond, 255, 

Irish players, 180. 

Irish question: 173 et seq.; real, 
poverty, 206; a stumbling- 
block to England's conduct of 
present war, 209 et seq.; Eng- 
lish public opinion on, 297- 
299. 

Irish railways: 397-400; British 
government control of, 399. 

Irish rebellion, 173-227, passim. 

James, Senator OUie: quoted on 

America's attitude toward 

present war, 317. 
James, Professor William, 340. 
Jameson, Sir Starr, 363. 
"John Bull": 267, 295; extracts 

from, 410. 
Joint committees: settlement 

by, of trade disputes, 49 e* 

seq. 
Journalism: studies in British, 

260-274 ; effect of war on, 263- 

267. 

Kl : 334. 
K2: 334. 
K3: 334. 



428 



INDEX 



K4: 335. 

K5: 335. 

"Kansas City Star," 271. 

Keithley: war savings of, 237. 

Kenney, Miss, 259. 

Kerr, P. H,, 253. 

Key, Ellen, 118. 

Kipling, Rudyard, 248, 273, 279, 

363. 
Kitchener, Lord, 384.. 
Kropotkin, 283. 



La Panne, 70. 

Labor: effect of democracy on, 
problem, 5; effect of war on, 
14 et seq.; shell-making as 
light on problem of, 18; ef- 
fect of peace on, quotation, 
42, 43; future of, 73 et seq. 

Labor College, 353-362. 

"Labor Leader," 274. 

Lady help : salary and duties of, 
147, 148, 150; at ladies' hostel 
for war workers, 151 ; at army 
pay officers' mess, 152; at 
lodging-house, 153. 

Lancaster, Ray, 253. 

"Land and Labor — Lessons 
from Belgium," by Seebohm 
Rowntree : quotation from, 
387. 

Land Courts : advocacy of, 360. 

Land Inquiry Committee, 357- 
360. 

Landlordism, 212 et seq. 

Lansbury, George, 272. 

Lasker, Bruno, 313. 

Law, Sidney: quoted on decay 
of Parliament, 404. 

Leaders: cause of change in, of 
government, 5; requirements 
of, in a democracy, 9 et seq.; 
England's need of wise, 71 et 
seq.; of the woman move- 



ment, 101 et seq.; demand for 
representative, 254 et seq. 

League of the Society of 
Friends, 103. 

Lee, Robert E., 190, 

Leisure: the problem of, 61 et 
seq., 68. 

Lever, Sir William, 364. 

Life: rules for "playing the 
game" of, 86 et seq. 

Lincoln, Abraham: product of 
democracy, 80, 323. 

Literature: effect of social 
movement on, 314 et seq. 

Lloyd-George: 3; attitude to- 
ward drink, 18; and suffra- 
gettes, 20, 25, 62, 100, 185; 
opinion of, on spirit of Eng- 
land, 229, 230; Bottomley on, 
268, 293; study of, 337-345; 
quoted on editors, 340. 

London Graduates' Union for 
Women's Suffrage, 103. 

Lusitania, 322, 324. 

Lyburn, E. St. John: quoted on 
coal fields of Ireland, 399. 



MacArthur, Mary, 101. 
MacDonakl, Ramsay, 62, 277. 
MacNeill, Professor: quoted on 

partition question, 194-196. 
Machinery: modern automatic, 

Q'i, 59; problem of new, 243- 

245. 
Mafeking Night, 257. 
Maine, 322. 
Mallon, J. J.: 62; quoted on 

trade-unions, 397. 
"Manchester Guardian," 271, 

293. 
Man-supported family: passing 

of the, 105. 
Marine engines, 17. 
Mame, 176. 



429 



INDEX 



Marx, Karl: influence of, on 

EngUsh labor, 90, 283. 
Massachusetts: minimum wage 

of women in, 98. 
Massingham, H. W., 311. 
Mauretania: 65. 
Maxse, Leo: 248; quoted on 

United States, 298. 
Mazzini, genius of democracy, 

80, 283. 
Meath, Earl of: on uncultivated 

land in Ireland, 220, 221. 
MeUe, 70. 
Milner: type of political mind 

of, 8, 253, 262, 266, 329; 

quoted on trusts, 403. 
Ministry: meaning of changes in 

British, 7 et seq. 
Money, Sir Leo Chiozza: quoted 

on effect of war on work, 365, 

366. 
Monroe, James, 323. 
Monroe Doctrine, 321 et seq. 
Montreal, 293. 
Moore, George, 180. 
More, Adelyne: on birth-con- 
trol, 390, 391. 
"Morning Post" (London), 366, 

293, 298. 
Morris, William, 63, 67, 68, 90. 
Mounteagle, 188. 
Muir, Professor Ramsay: 

quoted on Irish tradition, 175, 

176. 
Munition factories: future uses 

of, 244, 245. 
Munitions: relation of, to labor 

problem, 18: women and, 20 

et seq. 



sional Women's Suffrage So- 
ciety, 103. 

National Mission of Repentance 
and Hope, 30. 

"National Review," 298. 

National Sailors' and Firemen's 
Union, 285. 

Nationality, 326-336. 

Nelson, Horatio, 3, 

"New Age," 274. 

New Constitutional Society, 
103. 

"New Ireland": editors of, 264, 

"New Republic": 264. 

"New Statesman," 274. 

New Union, 103. 

"New Witness," 260-263. 

New Zealand, 4. 

Newborough, Lieutenant Lord: 
extract from will of, 412. 

Newman, Sir George: quoted on 
child welfare, 407. 

Nicoll, Robertson, 272. 

Nieuport, 70. 

North Nibley: war fund raised 
in, 336. 

Northampton: war subscription 
of, 237. 

Northcliffe, Lord: quoted on 
British army, 228, 248; per- 
sonality of, 269; influence of, 
on English ideas, 270, 271, 295, 
311, 410, 411. 

Norwich: war-savings of, 237. 

Noyes, Alfred, 279. 

"Observer," 272, 411. 
Ostend, 70. 

Oxford: influence of, on class 
system, 28. 



1 



Naquet, Alfred: quoted on Pankhurst, Mrs.: 20, 159; ef- 

birth-control, 391. feet of war on militancy of, 

"Nation," 264-266. 254 et seq.; personality of. 

National Industrial and Profes- 258. 

430 



INDEX 



Pankhurst, Sylvia, 101, 277. 
Parliament: effect of war on 
control of, over industrial leg- 
islation, 246 et seq.; decay of, 
404r-407. 
"Partition" : a farce comedy, de- 
scribed, 193, 194. 
Patriotism: local, of English- 
men, 412. 
Pauperism in Ireland, 206-227. 

Peace: program for dealing 
with unemployed on dawn of, 
21 et seq. 

Peasantry: effect of class sys- 
tem on, 28. 

People's Suffrage Federation, 
103. 

Personal-morality campaign, 18. 

Picardy, 96, 278. 

Pitt, William, 3. 

Platform of new social move- 
ment, 18 et seq. 

Plunkett, Horace, 179, 188, 363. 

Plunkett House, 218. 

Poland, 96, 176. 

Police Commissioner of Scot- 
land Yard: quoted on war 
spirit of English, 229. 

Policewomen in England, 154 et 
seq. 

Ponsonbyj 277. 

"Popular Magazine," 310. 

Preston: war-savings of, 238. 

Prince, Morton, 323. 

Protective agencies: establish- 
ment of, in mimitions plants, 
25. 

Prothero, 269. 

Proud, Miss: quoted on women 
in industry, 389. 

"Prussianism" : fight against, 42. 

Public houses, 30. 

"Punch," 268. 



'Quarterly Review," 274. 



Raemaekers, 270. 
Railroads: inadequacy of, in 
Ireland, 216; Belgium's pro- 
portion of light, compared 
with Great Britain's, 386, 387; 
Irish, 397-400. 
"Railway Review," 285, 286. 
Rathbone, Eleanor: 101; cited 
on military and naval fem- 
inists, 119-121. 
Reconstruction : demand for 
state and industrial, 10 et 
seq. 
Recruits: local patriotism of 

English, 332 et seq. 
Redmond, John: leader of Irish 

Nationalists, 254, 255, 256. 
Reeves, Mrs. Pember, 101. 
Reid, Archdall: on British Com- 
monwealth, 412, 413. 
Rhondda, Lord: dictator of 

Welsh press, 246, 311, 379. 
Roads: plan for improved, 23. 
RockefeUer, John D., 404. 
Roosevelt, Theodore, 340. 
"Round Table, The": 59, 187, 
253, 273, 313; quoted on Sir 
Hugh Bell's analysis of his 
expenses, 382. 
Roumania: labor societies in, 

226. 
Rowntree, Seebohm: 25, 62; 
quoted on modern machinery, 
65; welfare work of, 229, 269, 
313, 339, 350. 
Royden, Maude, 101. 
Runciman, Mr.: quoted on Irish 
agricultural conditions due to 
war, 401. 
Ruskin, John, 67, 90. 
Russell, Bertrand A. W., 14. 
Russell, Bertrand: quoted on 
race decline, 122, 123; author 
of "Why Men Fight," 265, 
275, 314. 



431 



INDEX 



Russell, Earl: on right of asy- 
lum, 288. 

Russell, George, 188, 198 et seq., 
264. See A. E. 

Russell, T. W.: statement of, on 
transportation, 398; cited on 
Irish acreage, 400, 

Russia: need of leaders to deal 
with, 9; influence of England's 
progress upon, 64. 

Russian peasantry versus Eng- 
lish masses, 31, 32. 

Russian Political Prisoners' and 
Exiles' Relief committee, 286. 

Russian refugees in England, 
283^291. 

Russian Seamen's Union, 284. 

Rutgers, Dr.: quoted by Frau 
Stritt, 390. 

Sainte-Beuve: Lloyd-George 
compared with, 340, 341. 

Saintsbury, George, 314. 

Salvation Army, 257. 

Samuel, Herbert: quoted on 
Russian refugees, 287, 288. 

Sanger, Mrs., 116. 

Sarno, Charles, 287. 

"Saturday Review," 36, 966. 

Schoolboys: war-savings of, 
238. 

Scott: Antarctic explorer, 330. 

Shaw, Bernard, 180, 273, 313. 

Sheffield, Lord: on right of asy- 
lum, 288, 290. 

Shop girl: advantages of being 
a, 108. 

Siamese Twin, The (Ulster), 
192-206. 

Sigerson, Dora, 180. 

Sinn Fein: principle of, 218. 

Slater, Dr. Gilbert: quoted on 
tenant farmers, 361, 362. 

Snowden, Philip, 63, 277. 



Snowden, Mrs. Philip, 101. 
Social revolution in England, 14 

et seq. 
Social studies, 228-336. 
Social workers: part played in 

government administration 

by, 246, et seq. 
Socialism: in Germany: 15 et 

seq., 55, 368-380, passim. 
Society of Women Graduates, 

103. 
Soldiers, post-bellum problem 

of, 250, 251. 
South Africa, 4. 
South Wales, 9. 
Spalding, H. N., 304, 339, 350. 
Spanish- American War, 322. 
Speaker's Franchise Conference, 

395. 
"Spectator": quoted on molding 

public opinion, 248. 
"Springfield Republican," 271. 
Standardization: effect of, of 

tools, 243 et seq. 
Status of colonies: change of, 4; 

effect of war on, 6 et seq. 
Stephens, James: 180: quoted on 

Irish freedom, 197; opinion of, 

on George Russell, 198, 264. 
Strachey, St. Loe, 248. 
Stritt, Frau: president Woman 

Suffrage Union, quoted on 

birth-control, 390. 
Suffrage: societies, 103; 395- 

397. See Woman, also Wom- 
an question. 
Suffrage Atelier, 103. 
Sutherland, Duke of: quoted on 

landed property, 356, 357. 
Sweden: in relation to social 

problems, 69 et seq. 
Sydney, 293. 
Syndicalism, 55, 363-380, pas- 



432 



INDEX 



Tables of wages and duties of 

lady help, 146-153. 
Tagore; quoted on nationalism, 

327. 
Tammany HaU, 102. 
Tariff: attitude of England 
toward, 249, 250; reform in 
Great Britain, 363-380, 407. 
Taxation: pressure of, 25: so- 
lution of problem of, 248, 
249. 
Taylor, Frederick: quoted on 

social reform, 78. 
Tenant farmers: in Ireland, 

212 et seq., 357 et seq. 
Tennant, Mr.: organization of 

labor forces by, 49. 
Thorndike, 92. 

"Times" (London) 36; cited on 
new machinery and build- 
ings, 242 et seq.; quoted on 
educational status of miners, 
354, 355, 367. 
Tolstoy: advice of, on social re- 
form, 78. 
"Top Notch," 310. 
Tory: specific meaning of, 8. 
"Tory Tradition, The": 26; 
quoted on national prosper- 
ity, 249. 
Town-planning: reform move- 
ment in, for workmen, 69, 70. 
Trade Unions: new concessions 

of, to woman, 144, 395-397. 
Transportation: cheap, for 

workmen, 70. 
Trevelyan, 277, 300, 301. 
Trinity College (Dublin), 178, 

179. 
Trusts: effect of mechanical 
standardization on, 245 ; 
Lord Rhondda in relation to, 
246, 403, 404. 
"Truth," 274. 



Turks: relative passive resist- 
ance of Englishmen and, 89. 
Tynan, Katharine, 180, 264. 

U-53, 317, 324. 

Ulster (The Siamese Twin), 

192-206. 
United States: in relation to 

enduring literature, 93, 243. 

See America. 

Verdun: 176, 278; Lloyd- 
George at, 341. 

Wages: influence of, on social 
movement, 25'. key to prob- 
lem of, 49; effect of higher, 
on workmen, 68; relative, of 
women in England and Amer- 
ica, 98 et seq.; post-bellum 
problem of, 249 et seq.; la- 
bor's demand for higher, 383, 
384. 

Wallas, Professor Graham: 
opinion of, on democratic 
control, 56; quotation from 
"The Great Society," by, on 
the rights of little nations, 
211; quoted on Walter Lipp- 
man, -im, 289, 314. 

War: influence of, on plan of 
British Commonwealth, 6; 
tendency of, to fertilize radi- 
cal ideas, 14; effect of, on 
trade unions, 17; effect of, 
on England's middle class, 
33; social problem created 
by, 228-352. 

War conference: influence of, on 
imperial constitution, 4 et seq. 

War Council, 405. 

War savings, 232 et seq. 

War work: women and, 106. 

Waterways: plan for, 23, 

Watson, William, 272. 



INDEX 



Watterson, Colonel, 271. 

Webb, Sidney: 13, 261; quoted 
on birth-control, 392. 

Webb, Mrs. Sidney, 101. 

Welfare: work, 25 et seq.; ef- 
fect of, department of gov- 
ernment on relation between 
employer and employed, 68. 

"Welfare Work," by Miss 
Proud: quoted on women in 
industry, 389, 390. 

Welldon, Dean: wisdom of, as 
a leader, 29. 

Wellington, Duke of, 3. 

Wells, H. G., 13, 248, 272, 313. 

"Welsh Outlook": quoted on 
Lord Rhondda's dictatorship, 
246. 

"Westminster Gazette," 271. 

Wharton, Edith, 272. 

Whitman, Walt: quoted on de- 
mocracy, 80. 

"Why Men Fight," by Bertrand 
Russell: quotation from, on 
birth-control, 114-116, 265, 
275. 

Wigstan Magna: record of, on 
war-savings certificates, 236. 

Williams, Captain Basil: quoted 
on English people, 240, 332. 

Wilson, President Woodrow: 
143; quoted on present war, 
317. 

Woman question: solution of, 
19, 20; full exposition of, 97- 
173, 395-397. 

"Woman Worker": organ of 
women trade-unionists, quot- 
ed, 255, 256. 

Women: services of, in national 
industries, 20 et seq.; emanci- 
pation of, 95 et seq.; suffrage 
societies of, 103; war work 
and, 106; future of, in Eng- 



land, 128 et seq.; Seebohm 
Rowntree's work in behalf 
of, 135; post-bellum prospect 
for, 282; in industry, 389, 
390; population and, 390-393; 
increased expenditure of, for 
clothes, 393-395. 

Women police service, 159. 

Woolf, 253. 

Workers' control, 381-384. 

Workers' Educational Associa- 
tion, 77. 

Workmen: effect of war on 
efficiency of, 16 et seq.; wishes 
of, 44, 45; attitude of, toward 
modern machinery, 66; ef- 
fect of leisure on, 68; condi- 
tion of, after hours, 69, 70; 
mission of, 75 et seq.; atti- 
tude of English, toward pa- 
triotism, 275 et seq.; produc- 
tive power of, during war, 
365, 366. 

Workshop councils: meaning 
of, 50 et seq., 380. 

Yarmouth: Zeppelins at, incen- 
tive to war subscription, 236. 

Yeats, 180. 

"Yorkshire Factory Times," 
285, 286. 

Young England: voice of, on 
solution of Irish question, 
quotation, 186-191. 

Younger Suffragists, 103. 

Ypres, 96. 

Zele, 70. 

Zimmern, A. E.: views of, on 
pioneers of social reform, 89 
et seq., 269, 273, 304; quoted 
on nationality, 328; cited on 
backward races, 407, 408. 



434 



I 



